"To know that an entire new generation now knows who I am, and my music, is thrilling to me," the singer said Monday

Connie Francis, whose hits dominated the Billboard charts in the early 1960s, was gratified to learn that one of her songs from that era has caught fire on TikTok, or as the kids say, gone viral.

Francis, 87, a singer and actor who grew up in Newark and Belleville, was a very successful pop star in the late 1950s and early ’60s.