“Pretty Little Baby”: Connie Francis’ Response to 1962 Song Going Viral in 2025 Is Incredibly Wholesome and Grandma-Coded

If you were scrolling through social media videos in the late spring of 2025, you’d be hard pressed to avoid Connie Francis’ “Pretty Little Baby.” Countless TikTok and Instagram users have been sharing lip-synching videos of the saccharine love song, coyly flirting with the camera as they sing, You can ask the flowers, I sit for hours tellin’ all the bluebirds, the bill and coo birds. Pretty little baby, I’m so in love with you.

Videos by American Songwriter

In a testament to how fickle and unpredictable popularity can really be, the song has gained a massive following over six decades after Francis first released it as a non-single track in 1962. In May 2025, the then-88-year-old singer responded to the news of her newly viral hit in a hilarious and wholesome way.

Connie Francis Responds To “Pretty Little Baby” Popularity

When Connie Francis first released “Pretty Little Baby,” she would have had no way of anticipating how her song would return to the mainstream 63 years later. In 1962, even mobile phones were a distant, sci-fi dream, let alone the internet, social media, and TikTok. But therein lies Francis’ newfound popularity: in thousands upon thousands of lip-synching, dancing, and cutesy videos that use her sugary sweet love song as a musical backdrop. Although Francis retired from the entertainment industry in 2018, she responded to her song’s viral status in a touching Facebook post.

“My thanks to TikTok and its members for the wonderful, and oh so unexpected, reception given to my 1961 recording “Pretty Little Baby,”” Francis wrote in a May 2025 post. “The first I learned of it was when Ron [Roberts, Concetta Records President] called to advise me that I had ‘a viral hit.’ Clearly out of touch with present-day music statistics terminology, my initial response was to ask, ‘What’s that?’”

Francis’ amusing response to her song going viral is what one might expect from an 88-year-old who predates the advent of social media by many decades. And now that she’s back in the mainstream spotlight, now’s as good a time as any to remind (or educate) folks on the singer’s record-setting career that expands far beyond her catchy tune “Pretty Little Baby.”

The Singer Was Setting Records Decades Before The Advent Of Social Media

There’s no denying the catchiness of Connie Francis’ “Pretty Little Baby.” With its singable melody and cutesy language, it’s no wonder that countless TikTok and Instagram users have jumped on the opportunity to make videos using the earworm tune. But it’s worth noting that Francis was a groundbreaking artist decades before the advent of the internet. Notably, Francis was the first woman to land a No. 1 placement on the Billboard Hot 100 with her 1960 hit, “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.”

Francis was a tremendously successful recording artist in the early 1960s, topping charts worldwide. But like so many other solo singers of the time, her popularity suffered as the British Invasion began shifting the musical tides to favor rock bands over singular performers. Interestingly, Francis never even released her now-viral hit, “Pretty Little Baby,” as a single. Compared to her other chart-toppers, the song wasn’t that significant to Francis’ musical legacy.

But over 60 years later, it definitely is now.