{"id":72709,"date":"2026-05-01T11:50:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T11:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/72709\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T11:50:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T11:50:49","slug":"denmarks-soren-torpegaard-lund-to-stay-true-at-eurovision-national-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/72709\/","title":{"rendered":"Denmark’s Soren Torpegaard Lund to ‘stay true’ at Eurovision | National"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denmark’s Soren Torpegaard Lund, one of the favourites in the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, has sparked a homophobic backlash in his progressive country with his electro-pop track, but he’s just trying to “stay true to myself”, he told AFP in an interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Torpegaard Lund, 27, will compete in Vienna on May 16th with the song “For vi gar hjem” (“Before We Go Home”), an ode to the world of nightclubs.<\/p>\n

It “tells the story of growing up with love and temptation, and actually giving in to it, because that’s what we learn from, and that’s how we learn to be grown-up human beings,” he told AFP on a sunny afternoon in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n

Torpegaard Lund says one of his greatest memories is Austrian drag artist Conchita Wurst’s Eurovision victory in 2014, when he was 15 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It made a big impact on me, just growing up as a queer kid,” he said, “finding out what my identity was and just putting it out there.”<\/p>\n

“That was a very cool moment.”<\/p>\n

Now, he’ll not only meet Wurst — who is one of the show’s presenters in Vienna — but will also fulfil his boyhood dream of being on the Eurovision stage.<\/p>\n

“I’m trying to really play it cool, but it is crazy to me that I’m going to be part of this.”<\/p>\n

– Backlash –<\/p>\n

His hip-swinging number in tight leather pants and a mesh top has however raised some eyebrows in normally liberal Denmark.<\/p>\n

“Some people in Denmark tried to tone my act down, and I also got some homophobic backlash from Danish people,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Fag in fishnets”, “homo in a box” and “HIV spreader” were among the hurtful comments he received on social media, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I’m definitely going to channel just staying true to myself,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I hate to see that it’s still happening,” he sighed, referring to anti-gay attacks.<\/p>\n

“I also loved being able to reply … just being like, ‘you can’t touch me’.”<\/p>\n

“We can be here. You can be here. Everyone can be here at the same time,” he said.<\/p>\n

Originally from a small town in central Denmark, Torpegaard Lund never took to sports, setting him apart from other kids.<\/p>\n

Instead, he turned very early to musical theatre, piano, and singing.<\/p>\n

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“There was nothing else for me that I could do so I kind of just went on that path,” he said.<\/p>\n

He attended Denmark’s National School of Performing Arts, and has since played the lead role of Tony in a Danish production of West Side Story, among other things.<\/p>\n

In February, Danes selected his song for Eurovision, with leading daily Politiken calling it “the right choice”.<\/p>\n

He is “an artist who is comfortable on stage, extroverted, with a choreography already ready that could easily fit into the Eurovision Song Contest,” the newspaper wrote.<\/p>\n

– ‘Create hope’ –<\/p>\n

Another challenge for Torpegaard Lund will be to rekindle Denmark’s interest in Eurovision, where it has lost some of its lustre after wins in 1963, 2000 and 2013.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t know that it was kind of cringe,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was very, very big in the 1980s and 1990s in Denmark and then it kind of stumbled the last 10 years.”<\/p>\n

“But I feel like it’s definitely having its comeback, and the music industry is realising that it’s very cool for established artists to have a platform to show their music.”<\/p>\n

While focused on his performance, he’s also aware of the tensions around this year’s competition.<\/p>\n

Five European broadcasters, including Ireland and Spain, are expected to boycott the 2026 edition over Israel’s participation, and more than 1,000 artists have also urged a boycott.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the Dane, the priority is for people to pull together.<\/p>\n

“In times of crisis, we as human beings have always come together to try to create hope in different ways, and … celebrate some kind of hope together. And I’m proud of being part of that.”<\/p>\n

He has refused to translate his song into English, as is customary for smaller languages like Danish, and is proud to represent all of Denmark — including Greenland and the Faroe Islands — at a time when US President Donald Trump’s appetite for Greenland threatens its territorial integrity.<\/p>\n

“I’m proud of representing countries that need to fight for their own right, their own freedom.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denmark’s Soren Torpegaard Lund, one of the favourites in the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, has sparked a homophobic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[688,27,26],"class_list":["post-72709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-afp","tag-danmark","tag-denmark"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116499178083148853","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}