Connie Francis Pretty Little Baby became an unexpected TikTok hit — 63 years after its release
As of Thursday, more than 22.5 million TikTok videos have been created using the sound, often partnering videos of baby animals, toddlers, makeup tutorials and retro fashions. According to TikTok, those videos have amassed more than 45.5 billion views, globally. Celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian and North West have used it, too, with West lip-syncing along to the track.
Hooky, feel-good pop songs tend to do well on TikTok, and 1962's 'Pretty Little Baby' is an exemplar of that phenomenon. Users gravitated toward the song's wholesome simplicity, sweet vocals, delicate organ and upstroke riffs. 'You can ask the flowers / I sit for hours / Telling all the bluebirds / The bill and coo birds / Pretty little baby, I'm so in love with you,' Francis swoons on the verse that has picked up steam on the platform.
And all of this has transpired in mere months: According to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company, 'Pretty Little Baby' was earning just over 17,000 on-demand audio streams in the U.S. during the week ending April 10. A month later, that number had climbed to 2.4 million. That's a growth of over 7,000%. The song has earned over 29 million streams this year so far.
In one popular video, which garnered over 56 million views, a user posted about baby teething hacks for first-time moms. Another user, Amari Goins, posted a video, with over 112 million views, of her 2-year-old daughter singing along to the lyrics, noting that her toddler picked up the song because of how often they heard it on TikTok.
Most recently, TikTok users have begun posting covers of 'Pretty Little Baby' as part of a singing challenge, where they exaggerate Francis' performance with their own stylized vocal runs. Francis, who died at 87, herself joined TikTok as a result of her song's popularity, and her first two videos — which earned 16.3 million and 31.2 million views, respectively — furthered engagement. In her first video, posted in early June, she said she was 'flabbergasted and amazed' at the song's resurgence.
'To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me,' Francis said in that first post, which she followed with a clip of herself lip-syncing to the song.
For decades, the song lived in relative obscurity — written by Don Stirling and Bill Nauman for Francis, it was never a single and was originally released in the U.K. as the B-side of her 1962 single 'I'm Gonna Be Warm This Winter.' It appears on her album 'Connie Francis Sings 'Second Hand Love,'' released the same year. More than 60 years later, the song reached No. 20 on Billboard's Digital Song Sales chart in June 2025 and hit both the Hot 100's Bubbling Under chart and the Billboard Global 200.
In Francis' last TikTok video, posted late last month, she thanked the 'many wonderful artists' who paid tribute to her, and all the users who sang along with her.
Peter Lemongello Jr., a singer and performer who called Francis a friend, posted a TikTok in May where he sang the song to Francis, what he wrote on Facebook was 'one of the greatest and most exciting moments of my career so far.' The video garnered over 15 million views.
'There are no words to express this monumental loss,' he wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. 'I will be forever grateful to her for the help she gave me with my career.'
Ian Paget, a TikTok creator, posted a tearful video Thursday and said he hopes Francis and her family 'have felt that love from the younger crowd learning who she is.'
The TikTok popularity of 'Pretty Little Baby' prompted her label Republic/UMe Records to reissue versions Francis had sung in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish in 1962. Bruce Resnikoff, president and CEO of UMe, wrote in a statement that the global catalog division was saddened but took 'comfort in knowing how joyful and fulfilled she felt in these last few months, as a new generation discovered her music and celebrated her legacy.'
In May, as the song took off, Francis thanked TikTok and its users for 'the wonderful, and oh so unexpected, reception' in a Facebook post.
As for her reaction to having a 'viral hit'? She continued: 'Clearly out of touch with present day music statistics terminology, my initial response was to ask: 'What's that?' Thank you everyone!'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
4 hours ago
- Indian Express
The Harvard-educated linguist breaking down ‘skibidi' and ‘rizz'
Adam Aleksic has been thinking about seggs. Not sex, but seggs — a substitute term that took off a few years ago among those trying to dodge content-moderation restrictions on TikTok. Influencers shared stories from their 'seggs lives' and spoke about the importance of 'seggs education.' Lots of similarly inventive workarounds have emerged to discuss sensitive or suggestive topics online. This phenomenon is called algospeak, and it has yielded terms like 'cornucopia' for homophobia and 'unalive,' a euphemism for suicide that has made its way into middle schoolers' offline vocabulary. These words roll off the tongue for Aleksic, a 24-year-old linguist and content creator who posts as Etymology Nerd on social media. Others may find them slightly bewildering. But, as he argues in a new book, 'Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language,' these distinctly 21st-century coinages are worthy of consideration by anyone interested in the forces that mold our shifting lexicon. 'The more I looked into it, the more I realized that algorithms are really affecting every aspect of modern language change,' Aleksic said in a recent interview, padding around the Manhattan apartment he shares with a roommate and wearing socks stitched with tiny dolphins. Even those who steer clear of social media are not exempt. If you have encountered Oxford University Press's 2024 word of the year, 'brain rot' (the 'supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state,' thanks to a firehose of digital content), you, too, have had a brush with social media's ability to incubate slang and catapult it into the offline world. Aleksic has been dissecting slang associated with Gen Z on social media since 2023. In wobbly, breathless videos that are usually about a minute long, he uses his undergraduate degree in linguistics from Harvard University to explain the spread of terms including 'lowkey' and 'gyat.' (If you must know, the latter is a synonym for butt.) The videos are more rigorous than their informal quality might suggest. Each one takes four or five hours to compose, he said. He scripts every word, and combs Google Scholar for relevant papers from academic journals that he can cite in screenshots. He appears to be fashioning himself as Bill Nye for Gen Z language enthusiasts. In the process, he has become a go-to voice for journalists and anyone older than 30 who might want to understand why 'Skibidi Toilet,' the nonsensical name of a YouTube series, has wormed its way into Gen Alpha's vocabulary. What he wants now is to be taken seriously outside of those circles. 'I want to balance being a 'ha-ha funny' TikToker with academic credibility,' he said. 'It's a little hard to strike that balance when you are talking about 'Skibidi Toilet' on the internet.' Aleksic settled in his living room, under the apparent surveillance of several stick-on googly eyes left over from his most recent birthday party. To the left of the entrance was a makeshift ball pit filled with orbs that resembled enormous plastic Dippin' Dots. (He installed it as a bit, but has come to appreciate its ability to foster conversation.) In person, he is animated but not frenetic, a click or three less intense than he appears in his videos. He is happy to lean into the persona of a fast-talking know-it-all if it means engaging people who wouldn't otherwise spare a thought for etymology. He started speeding up his cadence when he realized that brisk videos tended to get more views. 'I'll retake a video if I don't think I spoke fast enough,' he said. Just as Aleksic changed the way he spoke in response to algorithmic pressure, language, too, can be bent by users seeking an audience on social media. Take 'rizz,' which means something along the lines of 'charisma.' According to Aleksic, the word was popularized by Twitch streamer Kai Cenat, whose young fans picked up the term. So did the robust ecosystem of people online who make fun of Cenat's every move. Soon, the word had been flagged by TikTok's recommendation algorithm as a trending topic that it could highlight to keep viewers engaged. Influencers — including Aleksic — who wanted their posts to be pushed to more viewers now had an incentive to join in. This process slingshots trendy coinages into the broader consciousness. But it also yanks terms from their original context faster than ever before, he said. Words with origins in African American English or ballroom culture, for instance, are often mislabeled as 'Gen Z slang' or 'internet slang.' Aleksic tackles that well-documented phenomenon in a chapter titled 'It's Giving Appropriation.' Other sections of the book, which was released by Knopf this month, spend time with subcultures that play an outsize role in modern language generation, including K-pop fans, who boosted the term 'delulu,' and incels, or involuntary celibates, who popularized the term 'sigma.' Words have always traveled from insular communities into wider usage: Aleksic likes the example of 'OK,' which was Boston newspaper slang in the 19th century that spread with the help of Martin Van Buren's reelection campaign. (His nickname in full, 'Old Kinderhook,' was a bit of a mouthful.) But 'delulu' and 'rizz' didn't need the eighth president's help to travel across the country — they had the internet. And TikTok's powerful algorithm is more efficient at getting the word out than Old Kinderhook's most overachieving press secretary. Today, the cycle of word generation has been turbocharged to the point that some of its output hardly makes sense. Nowhere is that more evident than in a chapter titled 'Sticking Out Your Gyat for the Rizzler,' a chaotic mélange of slang that is hilarious to middle schoolers precisely because it is so illegible to adults. Words and phrases don't need to be understood to go viral — they just have to be funny enough to retain our attention. Aleksic argues that 'algospeak' is no longer as simple as swapping sex for 'seggs'; it is a linguistic ecosystem in which words rocket from the margins to the mainstream in a matter of days, and sometimes fade just as fast. When influencers modify their vocabulary and speech patterns for maximum visibility, those patterns are reinforced among their audiences. Aleksic said he works hard to keep viewers' attention, for example, jumping between camera angles roughly every 8 seconds. He longed for a forum in which he could discuss his ideas at length, and last January, he began refining an idea for a book about algorithms and language. That's an ambitious goal for a recent college graduate without an advanced degree or decades of research experience, the kinds of qualifications that abound in the linguistics publishing crowd. But youth has its upsides when it comes to the world of internet slang, said Gretchen McCulloch, the author of 'Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.' 'The tricky thing with internet linguistics is that the point at which you're the most qualified to speak about it from personal experience is also the point at which you have the least, sort of, academic credibility,' McCulloch said in an interview. She, too, is fascinated by how short-form video is affecting language, though she wonders which changes will be permanent and which will fade with time. Take the way that influencers often begin their videos with superlatives like 'The most interesting thing about …' Will those hyperbolic phrases bleed into other forms of communication, or will they lose their potency with overuse? There is a whole graveyard full of internet-speak — 'on fleek,' you will be missed — that has fallen out of fashion. While Aleksic wades through these big questions, he is also making time for really small ones. He is hoping to make a video about urinal conversations, which have been the subject of more academic papers than you might think. While we spoke, he pulled up his email inbox to scan through the questions that had come in from his followers. (He gets about 10 a day.) 'Somebody emailed me about the word 'thank' versus 'thanks,'' he said, scrolling through a message. 'You know, that's kind of interesting.'
Hindustan Times
8 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Why was Kis Cafe closed? San Francisco eatery's top chef fired after leaving TikToker in tears
A San Francisco restaurant was temporarily shut down after a TikTok influencer posted a video describing an interaction at the eatery that left her distressed. The co-founding chef of the restaurant was also fired. Why was Kis Cafe closed? San Francisco eatery's top chef fired after leaving TikToker in tears (Unsplash - representational image) A video taken at Kis Cafe went viral. The restaurant's other owner told NBC Bay Area that they plan to reopen the cafe with a new chef later. The eatery first opened earlier this summer, and is located in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood. "When we're ready, we will restart differently, separate from chef," the co-owner said. "This way my staff can also continue their livelihoods." The individual, who did not want to be named, stressed that he responded as promptly as possible after seeing the video featuring an interaction between his executive chef and the local TikTok influencer, itskarlabb. What does the video show? The five-minute long video shows an exchange between Executive Chef Luke Sung and the influencer, with the latter being left in tears. Initially, the TikToker described overhearing a conversation between the chef and a host, who had set up her visit. "This guy pulls up my TikTok and says that I have 15,000 followers, and some videos have millions of views, whatever, and this guy is not happy about it," she said in the post. She said that the chef approached her and had a direct conversation about her social media profile. "After scrolling like two times, he says to me that he doesn't think my videos are at the level at which he wants his restaurant to be represented," she said in the post. The restaurants issued an apology within two days and confirmed that Sung was not working with them anymore. Meanwhile, some neighbors said that they had planned to check the place out. "The menu looked decent, it seemed like a more approachable restaurant than the previous one that was in there. So, I was eager to try it," Brian Rohde said. Jacinth, another neighbor, said, "It's unfortunate that social media has turned to a state where you can type something, it can go viral from people who have no context of the situation, and ruin somebody's career." Meanwhile, the co-owner said he might now have to rename the restaurant and relaunch it. While he understands this will be challenging, he is ready to try and make it work, as are the rest of his staff. "I don't want to quit yet," he said. "This is my American dream. It's also my staff's."
India Today
10 hours ago
- India Today
Priyanka-Nick enjoy BLACKPINK's New York concert, dance to APT. Watch
Priyanka Chopra has made her love for BLACKPINK official. The actor attended the K-pop sensation's New York concert, part of their Deadline World Tour, alongside her husband-singer Nick Jonas. The couple shared glimpses of the electrifying night on Instagram as they grooved to the band's hits and cheered from the one of the clips shared by the global icon, BLACKPINK's Lisa is seen performing solo on stage in a stylish black outfit. Tagging her in the post, Priyanka wrote, 'What a queen.' Another video showed Jennie, Rose, Jisoo, and Lisa performing together, with Chopra. She also tagged the official handles of all four members. advertisementA fan account later posted a video of Priyanka and Nick enjoying the concert. The clip, reportedly reshared from Priyanka's TikTok, showed the couple dancing and vibing to BLACKPINK's music, even pausing to smile and pose for the camera. Priyanka looked radiant in a grey dress with matching earrings, while Nick kept it cool in a shirt, jacket, and pants. The 'Sucker' singer also posted his own videos from the concert, captioning one performance clip, '@blackpinkofficial in your area!!!' He later shared a snippet of Rose singing her popular track 'APT', with both he and Priyanka singing along with the crowd. 'APT (sic),' he captioned the 'Heads of State' sector had previously mentioned their daughter Malti Marie's love for 'APT' during her appearance on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon', saying, 'APT is her favourite song, by the way. Every morning. It's her morning anthem. Every single day.'Interestingly, Priyanka and BLACKPINK's Lisa also share a professional connection as global ambassadors for luxury brand Bulgari. The two have been clicked at various brand events and have interacted on several the work front, Priyanka recently starred in 'Heads of State' with Idris Elba and John Cena, now streaming on Prime Video. She's also set to headline 'The Bluff', where she plays a 19th-century Caribbean pirate, and will feature in SS Rajamouli's upcoming project alongside Mahesh Babu.- EndsTrending Reel
