EUROVISION: 2ND PLACE 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. Read more