Perhaps they let themselves be inspired by last year's contest where a timeless and stylish French ballad beat all the modern disco-sounding hit songs in competition.
Belgium had found themselves an equally classy chanson and on the day of the final at least Swedish newspapers seemed to regard Jean Vallée - who had already represented his country in Amsterdam 1970 - as the big favourite to win.
The eurovision history book on the shelf was not about to repeat itself at Palais de Congrès and the classy chanson was to be beaten by a jaunty and simple disco number with lyrics in Hebrew pig latin.
The real nail in the coffin was probably that the French had been sneaky enough to enter a similarly old-fashioned - but nowhere near as strong - entry that most probably stole the votes Belgium would have needed to win. However, Belgium had never been this close to victory before and probably celebrated all the way until ending in last place the following year.
A deserved 2nd place?
Absolutely. It would have been a very worthy winner too, but the zeitgeist sort of called for a more modern winner. That winner should have been Luxembourg, though. Or Germany.
Jean Vallée - L'amour ça fait chanter la vie (Belgium 1978)
The best song of the 1978 contest definately. What could go wrong with a song starting with a oboe (that is sadly missing from the recorded version of the song).
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