On July 16, 2025, the American pop and hit singer Connie Francis passed away in Broward Health North, Florida, at the age of 87.
Connie Francis (Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero) was born on December 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. As a child, she performed at local festivals and talent shows as a singer and accordion player and was a cast member of the NBC entertainment program “Startime Kids” from 1951 to 1955. After several unsuccessful recording sessions, she achieved a hit in 1958, almost by chance, with the song “Who’s Sorry Now?”, which sold more than a million copies within a few weeks. Through foreign-language cover versions of her own hits, Connie Francis became an international pop music star in the 1960s. In addition to her recordings, she was a sought-after live artist in the showplaces of Las Vegas and New York
City and performed in important international concert halls such as the London Palladium and the Olympia in Paris. While Connie Francis’s singles focused almost exclusively on commercialism and followed current trends of the time such as rock ‘n’ roll, twist, and the girl group sound, her albums presented her work in a wide variety of styles, including rhythm and blues, vocal jazz, country music, musical melodies, children’s songs, sacred music, traditional songs from various ethnic groups, as well as film soundtracks and portraits of well-known composers such as Burt Bacharach. With a few brief interruptions, Connie Francis was active on stage until the 2010s. She ended her stage career in 2017 with the publication of her autobiography.
The video shows Connie Francis performing one of her biggest hits, “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” during an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on June 12, 1960.
