UK Sends 38-Year-Old Rapper With Schoolgirl Dancers

MAY 15 2006 · 12:10

Daz Sampson · "Teenage Life" · United Kingdom · 2006 Placement: 19 · Score: 25 · Language: English · Composers: Daz Sampson · Venue: OAKA Indoor Hall · Host: Athens, Greece · Type: scandal · Broadcast: digital hd Sampson — 38-year-old UK dance producer, leopard-print jacket — raps chorus-driven white-British rap surrounded by five women in tartan school-uniform miniskirts. The staging reads, even at the time, as uncomfortable. 19th place with 25 points. Lordi win with 'Hard Rock Hallelujah'. The UK tabloid coverage the next morning calls the performance 'embarrassing'. Context BBC's 'Making Your Mind Up' selection had been trending in Mr. Whippy directions for several years. Sampson had had a UK charts career as a producer under the name Uniting Nations. The schoolgirl choreography was pitched as 'nostalgic' rather than as a deliberate provocation; retrospective coverage has not been kind. Legacy 'Teenage Life' is now consistently named in UK media as one of the worst Eurovision entries of the 21st century. Sampson continued as a working UK dance producer. The 2006 selection became a UK case study in how not to pitch Eurovision relevance, cited in the BBC's 2011 review that led to X-Factor-era selection approaches.