Don't Break the Heart That Loves You

March 1962

And so at last we return to Connie Francis, the once-tremendous and now-mostly-forgotten star. This is her third (and last) number-one hit.



The song is carried by a similar method of Francis harmonizing with herself via double-tracking that we found with her previous entry, "My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own." It's also characterized by a similar mid-paced, slightly shuffling, very white-bread sort of rhythm that hasn't aged well at all. She reminds me of Patsy Cline, only not as good. Cline was too country to ever make it to number one, but Francis had that magic formula of pop crossover that rocketed her to mega-stardom. But now who has the greater legacy? Sure, Francis had a pretty decent singing voice, but too much of her music starts to get tiresome. Go ahead, see how many Connie Francis songs you can make it through in a row:

The 43-Minute Francis Test

The above is a chronological playlist of all of the singer's top-ten hits, an impressive 16 of them from 1957–1962. That's a huge number; I don't believe any artist I've covered yet has had that many, excepting Elvis. Perhaps I've given short shrift to her five years of massive success; but a short five years was all she had in her. Maybe it's because these songs are so damn dreary, one after the other. The exception that proves the rule is "Lipstick on Your Collar," which actually threatens to be danceable.

I feel like I should have more to say about someone who hit the number-one spot three times, but I just don't. This is not music that inspires me to great heights of writing. I am having trouble conveying the immensity of her popularity while not really being all that enthusiastic about her.

So if you only take one thing away from this, it should be the spot at 2:09 in the video: "Hhhhhhi don't know what I'd do..."

C