The 1988 Finnish final almost saw a huge breakthrough as one of the entries in Swedish came closer to victory than ever before. The fantastic "Mitt äppelträd" also finished second back in 1982, but this time around the candidate was only two points short of winning.
Helena Miller - Svart och vitt (Finland NF 1988)
There had been a bit of discussion in Finland as to whether the local entries would stand a better chance in the European final if they were performed in Swedish instead of the more exotic-sounding Finnish lingo.
These discussions would finally culminate in Finland selecting a (considerably weaker) entry in Swedish and send it to Zagreb in 1990, where it would end shared last and lead to an almost complete absence of entries sung in Swedish.
Had Helena won, she would probably have scored quite a respectable number of points in Dublin and Swedish could have become a more prominent ingredient in future editions of Euroviisut.
So why didn't Helena win? There were a number of juries, located around Finland, who all voted tactically - giving full points to their favourite and giving very low scores to other highly tipped entries.
So what happens? A song that was nobody's favourite and didn't get a single set of top points won on a strong average. That's not the way to go, and in Dublin Boulevard crashed and burned with only three points (given by the jury in Jerusalem) to their credit.
Boulevard - Naravat silmät muistetaan (Finland 1988)
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