The Greatest Songs That Never Won
"Congratulations" sold six million copies. It came second. "Eres tú" reached the Billboard Hot 100. It came second. Ofra Haza became a global icon. She came second.
The winners got the trophy. The runners-up got the better story.
The Eurovision Song Contest has been crowning winners since 1956—but some of its most enduring songs never took home the trophy. They finished second and then quietly outlasted the winners by decades.
Eurovision: 2nd Place tells the stories behind 25 remarkable runners-up, from Cliff Richard's one-point defeat in 1968 to Sam Ryder's triumphant near-miss in 2022. Each chapter is a self-contained story of music, politics, ambition, and the razor-thin line between victory and something more interesting than victory.
You'll encounter a Franco-era substitution that may have rigged the result. A Spanish jury that accidentally handed the contest to Israel. A Norwegian singer who scored zero points and became more famous than any winner that year. A blind boy with a guitar competing against a group in Velcro skirts. And an Italian rapper who turned second place into the most streamed Eurovision performance in history.
Featuring Cliff Richard, Olivia Newton-John, Ofra Haza, Mocedades, Mahmood, Eleni Foureira, and 19 more artists who proved that in Eurovision, second place is where the real music lives.
