Eurovision Song Contest 1988 was the second victory for Switzerland at the Eurovision Song Contest after winning its first edition in 1956, and the last time a song in French won the contest, the language having dominated the event in earlier years. The contest helped launch an international career for two artists, the winner for Switzerland Céline Dion and Luxembourg’s representative Lara Fabian. French-Canadian Céline Dion was only famous in the French-speaking world at the time of the contest, shortly afterwards started recording songs in English. Belgian-Canadian Lara Fabian started a successful career after the contest with becoming established in various countries worldwide, with
Eurovision Song Contest 1988 for the 1984 Contest, where it had finished in 3rd place. This was classed as a breach of the Cypriot rules of selecting their entry at this time as well as an infringement of the Eurovision Song Contest rules. It was a very late decision as the song was already drawn to perform second in the contest, advertised in the Radio Times information about the preview programme of the contest, and appears as song number two in accordance to its initial performance draw, on the record release “Melodi Grand Prix 1988” – the compilation disc of the contest’s entries. This