The Defending Champion Finishes Last

MAY 15 1958 · 12:05

Corry Brokken · "Heel de wereld" · Netherlands · 1958 Placement: 9 · Score: 1 · Language: Dutch · Composers: Benny Vreden · Venue: AVRO Studios · Host: Hilversum, Netherlands · Type: upset · Broadcast: pre color Brokken — winner of the 1957 Eurovision contest in Frankfurt — returns in 1958 to defend her title on home soil, opening for her Netherlands. She delivers 'Heel de wereld' ('The whole world') with the same serious balladic register that had won her the prior year. Hilversum audience. Black-and-white broadcast. One point. Joint last place. No one else in Eurovision history has been both a winner and a last-place finisher. Context Brokken was the Netherlands' leading postwar chanteuse. AVRO Studios was hosting its first and only Eurovision. Her 1957 winning song 'Net als toen' had been compared to French chanson; 'Heel de wereld' was more middle-of-the-road. Benny Vreden, the composer, was an AVRO staff arranger. Legacy The defending-champion-finishes-last outcome remains unique in Eurovision history. Brokken returned a third time in 1976 as conductor. She became the Netherlands' foremost Eurovision elder stateswoman and died in 2016. Her 1958 last-place is now cited whenever the 'Eurovision curse' is invoked — the idea that winning creates a follow-up pressure that almost no artist survives.