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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Connie Francis was a trailblazing pop star haunted by tragedy
There may be more widely revered singers, but the statistics don't lie – worldwide, the Italian-American Connie Francis was the best-selling female vocalist of the 50s and 60s. Her breakthrough hit, 1958's Who's Sorry Now, was written as far back as 1923 and had been a hit for Johnnie Ray just a couple of years earlier, with a swinging, uptempo arrangement. But what made the 19-year-old Francis's version click was the way in which she took pleasure in her ex's misery, coolly and coyly cooing over the slow-rocking backing while picking his failed love life apart; for a finale, she ended the song with impressive, high-kicking spite. In contrast, her second UK No 1 was the daffy Stupid Cupid, written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and loaded with ear-catching gimmicks: the bow-and-arrow guitar effect on the chorus; Francis jumping an octave when she sings 'Cu-pid!'; and instruments that drop out – the musical equivalent of a wink – to allow her voice to sound as seductive as possible. Her career would follow this pattern through the late 50s and early 60s, alternating lightly updated pre-rock ballads with teenage material redolent of soda shops and drive-ins, the kind of American 50s scenario later lit in neon by Happy Days and Grease. Of the ballads, My Happiness and Mama were especially heartfelt performances, and both reached the top 10 in Britain and America, while the desperation of the country-leaning My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own gave her the second of three US No 1s. The finger-snapping Fallin' and It's Gonna Take Some Time were cool and sassy, while Lipstick on Your Collar (its title later used by Dennis Potter as a late 50s signifier) and Vacation were so camp, they were almost gleeful self-parodies. In 1960, Francis made her big-screen debut in Where the Boys Are, and the Sedaka/Greenfield theme song became another transatlantic top five single. 1960 was also the year Brenda Lee broke through – up to this point, Francis had been a lone trailblazer for women in rock'n'roll; the likes of Wanda Jackson and Jo Ann Campbell made great records but never came close to a top 10 hit, while the girl group era which gave us the Ronettes, the Chiffons and the Shangri-Las didn't begin in earnest until 1962. Francis struggled to adapt to the rise of the teenage girl group, though when she recorded material as strong as 1965's soulful No Better Off it was clear the fault didn't lie with the singer. She would be edged further into easy listening territory, scoring her last two hits in the UK with the darkly intense My Child in 1965 (she would never have children of her own) and the accusatory Jealous Heart in 1966. The latter could have been directed at her father, also her manager, who had broken up her relationship with the singer Bobby Darin by waving a gun at him; Francis would later describe Darin as 'the most interesting human being I've ever met in my life'. The following decades were less than kind to Connie Francis, who seemed to be dogged by tragedy. She was raped at knifepoint and almost killed in her motel room in 1974, after performing at a fair in New York state. She went public with the story, and Howard Johnson Motor Lodges were ordered to pay her $2.5m in compensation (later reduced to $1.475m in a settlement); this would then become a test case, leading to major upgrades in American hotel and motel security. The attacker was never found. Francis's bravery in going public couldn't help her overcome the mental health repercussions, and she didn't sing in public for several years afterward. Then in 1981, her brother was shot dead, apparently by a professional hitman; the trauma would lead to Francis being misdiagnosed with manic-depressive disorder. She was involuntarily hospitalized by her controlling father, and spent much of the 1980s in and out of psychiatric institutions. Again, Francis was brave enough to speak out as a survivor, and became a spokesperson for Mental Health America to help others 'suffering from the deleterious effects of depression and trauma of all kinds'. Though the hits had dried up in the mid-60s Connie Francis kept a devoted following. In 1977, 20 All Time Greats made her – rather shockingly – the first female solo artist to have a No 1 album in Britain. She had also been the first female singer of the modern pop era to score three US No 1 singles, while 1962's Pretty Little Baby – only an album track at the time – would become a TikTok hit, gaining millions of streams in 2025 thanks to its use by Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian. Connie Francis was a trailblazer, both as a pop star and an advocate of mental health support, and – like most trailblazers – she had to face the highs and the lows on her own.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Connie Francis was a trailblazing pop star haunted by tragedy
There may be more widely revered singers, but the statistics don't lie – worldwide, the Italian-American Connie Francis was the best-selling female vocalist of the 50s and 60s. Her breakthrough hit, 1958's Who's Sorry Now, was written as far back as 1923 and had been a hit for Johnnie Ray just a couple of years earlier, with a swinging, uptempo arrangement. But what made the 19-year-old Francis's version click was the way in which she took pleasure in her ex's misery, coolly and coyly cooing over the slow-rocking backing while picking his failed love life apart; for a finale, she ended the song with impressive, high-kicking spite. In contrast, her second UK No 1 was the daffy Stupid Cupid, written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and loaded with ear-catching gimmicks: the bow-and-arrow guitar effect on the chorus; Francis jumping an octave when she sings 'Cu-pid!'; and instruments that drop out – the musical equivalent of a wink – to allow her voice to sound as seductive as possible. Her career would follow this pattern through the late 50s and early 60s, alternating lightly updated pre-rock ballads with teenage material redolent of soda shops and drive-ins, the kind of American 50s scenario later lit in neon by Happy Days and Grease. Of the ballads, My Happiness and Mama were especially heartfelt performances, and both reached the top 10 in Britain and America, while the desperation of the country-leaning My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own gave her the second of three US No 1s. The finger-snapping Fallin' and It's Gonna Take Some Time were cool and sassy, while Lipstick on Your Collar (its title later used by Dennis Potter as a late 50s signifier) and Vacation were so camp, they were almost gleeful self-parodies. In 1960, Francis made her big-screen debut in Where the Boys Are, and the Sedaka/Greenfield theme song became another transatlantic top five single. 1960 was also the year Brenda Lee broke through – up to this point, Francis had been a lone trailblazer for women in rock'n'roll; the likes of Wanda Jackson and Jo Ann Campbell made great records but never came close to a top 10 hit, while the girl group era which gave us the Ronettes, the Chiffons and the Shangri-Las didn't begin in earnest until 1962. Francis struggled to adapt to the rise of the teenage girl group, though when she recorded material as strong as 1965's soulful No Better Off it was clear the fault didn't lie with the singer. She would be edged further into easy listening territory, scoring her last two hits in the UK with the darkly intense My Child in 1965 (she would never have children of her own) and the accusatory Jealous Heart in 1966. The latter could have been directed at her father, also her manager, who had broken up her relationship with the singer Bobby Darin by waving a gun at him; Francis would later describe Darin as 'the most interesting human being I've ever met in my life'. The following decades were less than kind to Connie Francis, who seemed to be dogged by tragedy. She was raped at knifepoint and almost killed in her motel room in 1974, after performing at a fair in New York state. She went public with the story, and Howard Johnson Motor Lodges were ordered to pay her $2.5m in compensation (later reduced to $1.475m in a settlement); this would then become a test case, leading to major upgrades in American hotel and motel security. The attacker was never found. Francis's bravery in going public couldn't help her overcome the mental health repercussions, and she didn't sing in public for several years afterward. Then in 1981, her brother was shot dead, apparently by a professional hitman; the trauma would lead to Francis being misdiagnosed with manic-depressive disorder. She was involuntarily hospitalized by her controlling father, and spent much of the 1980s in and out of psychiatric institutions. Again, Francis was brave enough to speak out as a survivor, and became a spokesperson for Mental Health America to help others 'suffering from the deleterious effects of depression and trauma of all kinds'. Though the hits had dried up in the mid-60s Connie Francis kept a devoted following. In 1977, 20 All Time Greats made her – rather shockingly – the first female solo artist to have a No 1 album in Britain. She had also been the first female singer of the modern pop era to score three US No 1 singles, while 1962's Pretty Little Baby – only an album track at the time – would become a TikTok hit, gaining millions of streams in 2025 thanks to its use by Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian. Connie Francis was a trailblazer, both as a pop star and an advocate of mental health support, and – like most trailblazers – she had to face the highs and the lows on her own.
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Connie Francis: Don't Break the Heart that Loves You singer dies aged 87
Connie Francis, who dominated the pop charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s with sobbing ballads like Who's Sorry Now? and Don't Break the Heart that Loves You, as well as up-tempo soft-rock tunes like Stupid Cupid, Lipstick on Your Collar and Vacation, has died aged 87. Her publicist, Ron Roberts, announced her death in a post on Facebook. Petite and pretty, Francis had an easy, fluid vocal style, a powerful set of lungs and a natural way with a wide variety of material: old standards, rock'n'roll, country and western, and popular songs in Italian, Yiddish, Swedish and a dozen other languages. Between 1958 and 1964, when her brand of pop music began to fall out of favour, Francis was the most popular female singer in the United States, selling 40 million records. Her 35 top 40 hits during that period included 16 songs in the top 10, and three number one hits: Everybody's Somebody's Fool, My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own and Don't Break the Heart That Loves You. She was best known for the pulsing, emotional delivery that coaxed every last teardrop from slow ballads like Who's Sorry Now? and made Where the Boys Are a potent anthem of teenage longing. Sighing youngsters thrilled to every throb in My Happiness and Among My Souvenirs. 'What struck me was the purity of the voice, the emotion, the perfect pitch and intonation,' said Neil Sedaka, who wrote Stupid Cupid and Where the Boys Are with Howard Greenfield. 'It was clear, concise, beautiful. When she sang ballads, they just soared.' Her song Pretty Little Baby had a TikTok -fuelled resurgence this year, trending for weeks on the social media app and soaring to top spots in Spotify's Viral 50 global and US lists. Concetta Franconero was born December 12th, 1938, in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in the Ironbound neighbourhood. Her father, the son of Italian immigrants, was a dockworker and a roofer who loved to play the concertina, and he put an accordion in his daughter's hands when she was aged three. Connie Francis at her home in 2025. Photograph: Miami Herald/TNS From that moment, he hovered over her musical development and her career, putting her onstage at local lodges and churches. She made her stage debut aged four, singing Anchors Aweigh and accompanying herself on the accordion at Olympic Park in Irvington, New Jersey. At 11, Francis was a regular on a Marie Moser's Starlets, a local television variety show. After appearing on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. Mack advised her to lose the accordion, and Godfrey advised her to change her last name to 'Francis'. She then embarked on a four-year run as one of the child entertainers on Startime. As she outgrew the child star category, Francis obtained forged documents and began singing in clubs and lounges. Imitating the vocals styles of stars like Patti Page and Rosemary Clooney, she made demonstration tapes for music publishers who wanted to place their songs with famous singers. – This article originally appeared in the New York Times . 2025 The New York Times Company
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Connie Francis, Whose Ballads Dominated '60s Pop Music, Dies at 87
Connie Francis, who dominated the pop charts in the late 1950s and early '60s with sobbing ballads like 'Who's Sorry Now?' and 'Don't Break the Heart that Loves You,' as well as up-tempo soft-rock tunes like 'Stupid Cupid,' 'Lipstick on Your Collar,' and 'Vacation,' died on Wednesday. She was 87. Her publicist, Ron Roberts, announced her death in a post on Facebook. Petite and pretty, Ms. Francis had an easy, fluid vocal style, a powerful set of lungs and a natural way with a wide variety of material: old standards, rock 'n' roll, country and western, and popular songs in Italian, Yiddish, Swedish and a dozen other languages. Between 1958 and 1964, when her brand of pop music began to fall out of favor, Ms. Francis was the most popular female singer in the United States, selling 40 million records. Her 35 Top-40 hits during that period included 16 songs in the top 10, and three No. 1 hits: 'Everybody's Somebody's Fool,' 'My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own' and 'Don't Break the Heart That Loves You.' She was best known for the pulsing, emotional delivery that coaxed every last teardrop from slow ballads like 'Who's Sorry Now?', and made 'Where the Boys Are' a potent anthem of teenage longing. Sighing youngsters thrilled to every throb in 'My Happiness' and 'Among My Souvenirs.' 'What struck me was the purity of the voice, the emotion, the perfect pitch and intonation,' said Neil Sedaka, who wrote 'Stupid Cupid' and 'Where the Boys Are' with Howard Greenfield. 'It was clear, concise, beautiful. When she sang ballads, they just soared.' Her song 'Pretty Little Baby' had a TikTok-fueled resurgence this year, trending for weeks on the social media app and soaring to top spots in Spotify's Viral 50 global and U.S. lists. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I needed to be locked up': how Kavana went from 90s pop stardom to smoking crack in a skip
Nobody could say that Anthony Kavanagh does not know how to laugh at himself. The day he was fired from his record label, he trudged across London in the rain, walking and walking, as the realisation sank in that he was no longer a pop star. Soaked, he went into a pub and the woman behind the bar offered him a grubby tea towel to dry off. Washed-up indeed, he thought. His memoir, Pop Scars, is sprinkled with darkly comic takes on what his life had become after 90s pop stardom. Known as Kavana, he had a Top 10 hit in 1997 with his cover of Shalamar's I Can Make You Feel Good. 'I've always somehow been able to find the humour, even at some of the darker times,' he says. And there were dark times. Making a joke about a Neil Sedaka song ('Oh, Carol. Oh fuck, more like') to describe the reality of waking up in a stranger's apartment; fragments of a memory of driving down Sunset Strip with Sedaka on the car stereo; the realisation he had been paid for the sex he couldn't remember. Smoking crack in a skip in Hackney with a homeless woman he had just met, and whom he trusts with his bank card to go and score more drugs ('Note to self,' he writes, 'never give a stranger your pin code when high'). There are funnier, less serious incidents – he earned a lifetime ban, he says, from the daytime TV show Loose Women after slurring his way through it and being 'unhinged' backstage – but in general, it's a fairly bleak account of addiction, pain and what happens when the pop machine spits you out. He is very hard on himself, I say, when we meet in the offices of his publisher (at 47, he retains the boyish looks that made him a teen favourite). 'Well, I had that narrative for a long time. I think when you have a lot of rejection …' He pauses. As an alcoholic in recovery, and three years sober, he is kinder to himself now. 'But looking back, that's definitely how I felt.' Writing the book has helped. 'It's given me some self-esteem which is, I think, what I've been lacking for a long time.' He worried he wasn't a big enough name to be interesting to anyone now, until he started to view the book as a memoir of addiction, 'and that includes the fame part, because really I was only chasing a feeling. Approval, basically.' And what happens after fame disappears. 'I have a bit of empathy for the young me, because although I was driven and ambitious and smart, I was also very naive.' Growing up in Manchester in the 1980s, born to parents who already had a 20-year-old daughter, Kavanagh wanted nothing more than to be a pop star. Smash Hits magazine was his bible – every fortnight, he'd bring it home from the shop, 'take it in my bedroom and go through the pages. It was just an escape into this fantasy world.' Bullied, and with the dawning realisation he was gay, he found school an ordeal, but he also had an iron belief that he would be a famous pop star one day. Where did that come from? 'Delusion?' he says with a laugh. 'Maybe wanting to escape. I just had a feeling, and I would go around telling everyone that it was a given – I was going to be on Top of the Pops.' When he became successful – Top 10 singles in the UK, adored in Asia – the picture he gives is of an excited and confused teenager in a bewildering world. It would have been easier, he thinks, if he'd been in a boyband, because at least there would be backup. He had body image issues: he had been overweight as a young teenager, and people around him still commented that he was 'chubby'. 'I used to get a bit fearful sometimes in the photoshoots.' Mostly he was afraid of being outed, when his success with his teenage girl fans depended on him being a 'straight' pop star. 'There was fear in general, regardless of being a pop star. I hadn't told my parents. I didn't tell my sister till I was 18. It was a different age then.' Sometimes, on tour with other artists, he would share a passing glance with another man and wonder if they were interested. 'You'd have a little feeling, but I dared not say to you, in case you then tell somebody else.' On one tour, he and Stephen Gateley, from the boyband Boyzone, spent the night together. Keeping his sexuality hidden must have been incredibly difficult. 'It was, and that's where alcohol came in as a comfort. It's crazy when I look back now, the time that we were in. It was a constant act, and it was exhausting – but you just got on with it, because I was so lucky for this to happen to me, and I must be grateful. I put everything into the ambition.' It's strange, Kavanagh says, to be doing interviews again at a time where he doesn't have to hide his sexuality, and there is more understanding of the pressures on young pop stars and power dynamics in relationships. 'We didn't talk about mental health. Today you hear they give artists aftercare or therapy, but there wasn't any of that then. I suppose I didn't have the knowledge to ask, either. What would I have asked for? We didn't use those words back then. And when it's so fast, fast, fast, and there's a lot of 'yes' people, and you're told how fantastic you are, that's enough sometimes to make you feel OK.' It made it harder, he says, when only a few months later, the fame bubble popped. 'Especially if it becomes your identity,' he adds. Even when he was successful, he says, 'I was never satisfied. I won a Smash Hits award – like, that was the holy grail to me. It doesn't get much better than that. But then, I think maybe the addiction side, you want something else. I kept wanting more and more. At 21, I decide I'm going to go and live in America, I'm going to make it there.' He laughs at himself – the young man who had just been dropped by his record label, and who genuinely believed he could move to Hollywood and pick up an Oscar. 'It's like, OK, that's a normal thing to do.' It actually started well: he got an agent, and a small part in a soap within the first week, but only for a couple of episodes. He was trying to release his own music, become a songwriter, go to auditions, but mostly he was lonely, burning through his money and drinking more and more. Sometimes drugs, too, including crystal meth. But, he says, 'Alcohol was the start and the end. I would never have taken drugs without alcohol. But yeah, I was like a loose cannon for some of those times, got myself into some situations.' Such as waking up in a stranger's flat, realising he had been paid for sex. Kavanagh ended up living in a motel, then eventually returned home after seven years – in 2006 – penniless. It meant losing his parents' home, which he had been paying the mortgage on. 'That comes with a whole load of guilt, because I'm moving two elderly parents, they've lost this house. So that's more reason to drink.' His years out of the UK meant everyone had forgotten about him. He looked around at the people who had grown up with him – former pop stars and actors such as Ant and Dec, and Billie Piper – who had successfully reinvented themselves, and felt as if he'd made a mistake. 'So then there's shame and regret with that.' He smiles. 'There was no jungle [the I'm a Celebrity … reality show] in them days to go on when your pop career is washed up. When I disappeared … 'I'll make it in Hollywood!'' He tried to stage a comeback, releasing a 'best of' album and appearing on reality shows including Celebrity Big Brother and Grease Is the Word, but he sabotaged many opportunities by being drunk. He started hanging around with the singer Amy Winehouse, who had her own alcohol addiction, and crashing at the flats of his few remaining loyal fans, drinking more. Signing on at the jobcentre back in Manchester, he was scared of being recognised – people had started, dishearteningly, to ask him: 'Didn't you used to be Kavana?' 'I was so wrapped up in my own shame,' he says. 'I was having to drink.' And alcohol worked for him, he says, 'for a long time. I'm not sitting here saying: 'Oh, it was tragic, it was awful.' Alcohol got me through my father's death. It kind of got me through my sister's death [from cancer in 2019]. It got me through feeling nervous, it got me through going on stage, homesickness. But I didn't realise what it was doing to me.' By the time he was essentially homeless, living secretly with his mother in her sheltered housing flat, Kavanagh was deep in addiction. He applied for a place at rehab mainly, he says, to have somewhere to live, and was sober for six months before spectacularly relapsing on a songwriting retreat, and drinking neat vodka in a phone box. In London, he would go through a cycle of attending AA meetings, then drinking again. By the time he was buying three-litre bottles of cheap cider to drink in the mornings (along with tins of cat food, to create, he thought, an air of respectability), he knew he was in trouble. 'Alcohol became as important to me as oxygen to survive,' he says. 'That sounds quite melodramatic to somebody that has never experienced that, but I knew the game was up. I wanted to stop, but I physically couldn't.' He would often spend the rest of the day at a Costa coffee shop, pretending to work on his phone and sipping wine from a paper cup. One day, an email from a lawyer came through. A newspaper had agreed to settle a defamation case he'd long forgotten about from the 90s, and the sum was more than he had seen in a decade. 'I'm drinking wine out of the coffee cup, and just that divine timing,' he says. He called his AA sponsor, and asked for help to find a private rehab clinic. 'At that point I needed to be locked up,' he says. A friend drove him there, and Kavanagh remembers the friend telling staff he thought alcohol had caused him brain damage. 'To think that I'd got myself in that state.' Kavanagh thought alcohol would kill him. 'I've seen it happen to others, and I think it scared me that last time in rehab.' For whatever reason, rehab worked, and Kavanagh has been sober for three and a half years. He wakes up, 'and I pray to a god that I don't understand, and just say, 'You drive today.' I go to meetings, I try to be of service. Anything that takes me out of thinking and negotiating things in my head, I've learned, is what helps. Connecting with others.' Kavanagh wrote his book during the first year of sobriety. 'I've got access to this new life now, but I just have to remember that that's where it took me last time.' He is proud to call himself an author, and might make some music again at some point. He'd quite like to do a one-man show. Does he still crave approval and recognition? 'I'd be lying if I said I didn't crave approval. I'm not sure about being hugely famous, because I know how fleeting it can be, but there's definitely something to be said about putting something you've done out and getting positive feedback. Or people connecting to me.' Pop Scars by Anthony Kavanagh is published on 17 July by Bonnier (£22). To support the Guardian, buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply
