Highlights
- Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour after pro-Palestine remarks, and four opening acts quit too.
- Ed Sheeran insists the removal was the promoter’s call, not his, but fans and fellow stars aren’t buying it.
- Roger Waters, Pink, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have all weighed in on the growing controversy.
Ed Sheeran‘s Loop Tour didn’t just lose an opening act this week. It lost four, all at once, over two words: Free Palestine.
Macklemore lit the fuse at MetLife Stadium, keffiyeh on, reviving his 2024 protest anthem “Hind’s Hall” for two sold-out New Jersey crowds. The Israeli American Council had already petitioned to pull him, insisting, “This was an Ed Sheeran concert, not a political rally.”
Robert Kraft, the billionaire who owns the Patriots and Gillette Stadium, decided that was a bridge too far. His statement didn’t soften the blow, calling Macklemore’s rhetoric “deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.”
Macklemore says Sheeran didn’t push back. According to the rapper, Kraft rallied other venues too, delivering an ultimatum straight to Sheeran: “you will not be allowed to play in our venues.” Days later, Macklemore was off the bill entirely.
Sheeran finally broke his silence Tuesday, and it read less like a mea culpa than a legal memo. “I am not complicit,” he wrote, insisting the call came from the tour’s promoter, not him.
Fans hoping for a spine got a shrug in a press release instead. That shrug backfired within hours.
Finneas walked first, posting, “Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed,” before confirming he was off the tour for good.
Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe followed, framing his exit through his own country’s history: “we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation.”
Sheeran’s actual touring band, the Irish outfit Beoga, quit too, calling themselves “founding members of the Irish Artists for Palestine movement.”
Danish hitmakers Lukas Graham closed out the walkout with the cleanest mic drop of the week: “Money doesn’t give you the right to own the conversation.”
Then came the celebrity pile-on. Pink got torched online for reposting a demand for refunds over Macklemore’s set, then fired back at her critics: “I don’t need anyone fired, and I don’t need a refund.”
Pink Floyd‘s Roger Waters, never one to underreact, filmed a video addressed straight to Sheeran, opening with, “There’s two kinds of people in this world, Ed,” before calling him a name we can’t print.
Boy George shrugged the whole thing off, noting he was never a Sheeran fan to begin with. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took it more seriously, framing the fallout as proof of how much power a handful of stadium owners hold over what artists say onstage.
Here’s where the Loop Tour stands: one rapper out, four openers gone, and a British pop star insisting he’s just an innocent bystander in his own show. Sheeran built this tour to sell togetherness and escape from politics. Instead, he’s spending September explaining himself on Instagram, one lawyered paragraph at a time.
The tour still has dates through November before a South American leg carries into December. Good luck finding anyone left willing to open.
In the latest development, Macklemore said he is donating $1 million of his earnings to Palestinian relief organizations after his removal from Ed Sheeran’s tour, and he’s invited New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to do the same.
“Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protection,” Macklemore wrote. “A Palestinian life is no less valuable than any life on this earth.”
