Forever No. 1: Connie Francis, ‘My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own’

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Connie Francis, whose 1960 lament “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own” became her second straight No. 1 in late 1960.

Some artists’ biggest chart hits are no-doubters, obvious signature songs who anyone with the most passing familiarity in their catalogs could guess as their best-performing Billboard entries. With some other artists, like Connie Francis, it’s less clear: Ask an average fan of ’50s and ’60s pop to name her three Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s and they might guess enduring songs like “Who’s Sorry Now,” “Stupid Cupid” or “Where the Boys Are” — none of which even made the top three on the Hot 100 or the pre-Hot 100 Billboard pop charts. (Ask a modern-day pop fan and they might guess her 2025 mega-viral TikTok favorite “Pretty Little Baby,” which was never even released as an A-side.)

“My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own,” which followed “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” (the first Hot 100 No. 1 from a solo female artist) to the chart’s apex in late 1960, might not even be one of those pop fans’ first 10 guesses. Though the song has a place in chart immortality as one of her three Hot 100-toppers, it is seemingly not one of her best-remembered pop smashes, nor one of her currently most-played — in terms of total on-demand U.S. audio streams, it ranks just 17th in her catalog, according to Luminate. Even Billboard scribe Fred Bronson, in his canonical Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits, seemed to have little interest in “Heart,” mostly using its book entry to talk about Francis’ other lower-peaking hits, while including just one perhaps telling “Heart” factoid — that, according to Francis, she deemed the song a smash before even getting to hear its demo (“Doesn’t matter, it’s a great title!”)

In truth, the muted enduring affection for “Heart” among pop fans may have to do with the fact that the song arguably better belongs to another genre: country. Multiple generations after her commercial peak, few would associate Francis with anything Nashville-related: The Italian-American singer, born in Newark, N.J., was one of the preeminent pop icons of the pre-Beatles rock era. But she worked in a wide variety of different genres over her career, and country was certainly one she regularly returned to — even recording multiple primarily country albums, such as 1959’s Country & Western — Golden Hits and 1964’s Connie Francis and Hank Williams Jr. Sing Great Country Favorites, recorded alongside the titular second-gen country great when he was just a teenager. In fact, she even scored a trio of crossover hits on the Hot Country Songs chart, including “Fool,” which peaked at No. 24 in July 1960.

“Heart” was not embraced by country radio as “Fool” was — which is surprising in retrospect, as the former has an even clearer country sound and appeal to it. It begins with wailing strings and twanging guitar over a mournful shuffle, and when Francis enters, she does so in piercing, double-tracked vocal harmony designed for maximum devastation. And the lyrics are brutal from the jump — “I told this heart of mine our love would never be/ But then I hear your voice and something stirs inside of me” — before getting even more wrenching on the song’s more casual, low-key verse: “You’re not in love with me, so why can’t I forget?/ I’m just your used-to-be/ It’s wrong, and yet….” Even the title phrase, which Francis immediately fell for, falls pretty squarely in line with classic country wordplay and lyrical imagery. It’s all much closer to Pasty Cline than it is to Paul Anka.

It all works, too. The arrangement, courtesy of Hollywood musical arranger Gus Levene (The King and I, Carousel), is a pure tearjerker, beautifully evoking dusty bars and desolate dancefloors. And Francis understands how to really hit ’em where it hurts with her vocal, punching the opening consonant on every first word of the new measure (“No matter wwwwhat I do,” “But then my hhhhhhheart says no”) until you can practically hear the lump in her throat. By the time slide guitar stretches up the fretboard to signal the 2:32-long song’s closing, you’re instinctively reaching for another quarter for the jukebox and ordering another beer at the bar to repeat the experience all over.

And perhaps the success of “Heart” is telling of how small the gap between country and pop was in 1960 — a year in which such country stars like Marty Robbins (“El Paso”) and Jim Reeves (“He’ll Have to Go”) both scored massive Hot 100 crossover hits, and even pop-rock stars including Brenda Lee (“I’m Sorry”) and Elvis Presley (“Are You Lonesome Tonight?”) had major smashes that were at least country-inflected. Regardless, “Heart” quickly followed in its predecessor’s chart footsteps, debuting at No. 56 on the chart dated Aug. 15, 1960 (while “Fool” was still in the top 20), and replacing Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” at No. 1 six weeks later. It lasted two weeks on top, before being replaced by Larry Verne’s novelty hit “Mr. Custer.”

Francis would return to No. 1 in 1962 — as, surprisingly, would “The Twist” — and she had three more top 10 Hot 100 hits in between then, as Francis was well on her way to becoming one of the greatest pop hitmakers of her era. She would only return to Hot Country Songs sporadically, with minor hits in 1969 and 1983 — but in the meantime, other country artists would have much bigger hits with their spins on Francis hits like “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own,” including Susan Raye and Debby Boone, both of whom made the chart’s top 20 in the ’70s with their “Heart” takes. And in her early days, no less a country legend than Reba McEntire took her turn with the song, with a rendition ultimately released on the 1994 compilation Oklahoma Girl, alongside songs made famous by Roger Miller and indeed, Patsy Cline.