The name Connie Francis might conjure up something inconceivably ancient to you, but let’s not forget how big of a deal she was, all over the world. She was the first solo female artist to hit #1 on the pop charts – period. She was the first American pop artist to be huge across the entire western world – she sang in German, Spanish, Italian, even Yiddish and Romanian. She was also the first artist to hit the US charts with non-English language songs. In total, she sold over 100 million records.

The odd thing is that I had some kind of premonition a few days ago that Connie Francis was about to die. And so it goes – at age 87. She was pretty amazing if you ask me – she got a full scholarship to NYU at one point, and was going to go back to college to become a doctor, but her 8th attempt at releasing a single finally hit the charts.

Here’s one of my favorite of her songs in German – “Schöner Fremder Mann”. Translated, that’s “beautiful stranger man”.