Acts abandon Ed Sheeran tour after Macklemore barred over ‘Free Palestine’ comments
CNN
By Zoe Sottile, CNN
(CNN) — Ed Sheeran’s international tour has been thrown into crisis, with one opening act, the rapper Macklemore, dropped from the tour’s US dates for his onstage support of Palestine, and all of the British singer’s other openers quitting to protest the removal.
On Monday, Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, said he would bar Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts this month. Macklemore, who made pro-Palestinian remarks during shows in New Jersey, said he had been removed from the rest of Sheeran’s American tour as well.
On Tuesday, Finneas, a producer who is also Billie Eilish’s brother, the Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe, the Irish band Beoga and the Danish band Lukas Graham all withdrew from their opening slots on the tour, expressing support for both Macklemore and the Palestinian people.
Macklemore, a rapper best known for 2012’s “Thrift Shop,” has publicly advocated for Palestinian rights since Israel began its years-long bombing campaign in Gaza after the October 7 attacks. Opening for Sheeran earlier this month at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the rapper wore a black-and-white keffiyeh tied around his neck.
“A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place, was so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine,” he said, according to video of the event. He added that “to all of my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you.”
Macklemore has regularly performed at pro-Palestinian rallies since 2023. In 2024, he released “Hind’s Hall,” named after the building taken over by Columbia student protesters, who renamed it in honor of Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
His comments at Sheeran’s show prompted criticism from the singer Pink and a petition against his appearances. On Monday, Macklemore announced on Instagram he’d been dropped from Sheeran’s remaining US tour dates.
Macklemore has pointed the blame squarely at Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium, where Sheeran and Macklemore were scheduled to perform later this month. Kraft, Macklemore said, had “rallied some of the other stadium owners” and given Sheeran an ultimatum: “if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.”
Kraft, an advocate for Israel who withdrew funding for Columbia University to rebuke the school for its handling of protests against the war in Gaza, confirmed that he chose to cancel Macklemore’s performances at Gillette Stadium. He didn’t address Macklemore’s claims that he had “rallied” other stadium owners, and did not respond to requests for more information.
“Based on Macklemore’s recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran’s shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, we determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line,” Kraft said in a statement.
“This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf,” he went on. “Too many lives have been lost and there has been too much suffering, but only sharing selective information and ignoring the actions of Hamas is not honest and only advances more divisiveness and hate.”
Sheeran placed the blame on the concert promoter, who he said forced his hand. “After Macklemore’s performances at my New Jersey shows, venues on my upcoming tour dates communicated that they would pull the shows if he was still supporting,” he said on Instagram Tuesday. “Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine.” The promoter didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Chilling effect
Legally, under the First Amendment, Kraft and other people who privately own stadiums have the right to choose who performs at their venues, said Lee Rowland, the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. But “that doesn’t mean that that’s healthy for our democracy or good for free expression,” Rowland said.
Rowland said the cancellation of Macklemore’s tour dates “illustrates the immense power that money has over our public discourse.”
Macklemore was scheduled to open for Sheeran at seven more stadiums in the US. Several of those are publicly owned. The remaining venues did not respond to requests for comment.
Among them is AT&T Stadium, which is owned by the city of Arlington, Texas. AT&T Stadium is scheduled to host a sold-out show later this year by Ye, who made a spate of antisemitic comments that he now attributes to a brain injury and untreated bipolar disorder, and who is selling out shows in the US.
In 2014, Macklemore publicly apologized for performing while wearing a hooked false nose, wig and fake beard, which he called a “random costume” but which observers widely read as an antisemitic caricature. Kraft did not respond to a question about whether he was referring to that incident or to something else when he accused Macklemore of past antisemitism.
The Macklemore cancellation will likely have a chilling effect on other artists, Rowland said.
“We are undoubtedly going to see widespread self-censorship, so that artists ensure their content is uncontroversial and anodyne enough not to offend a promoter or a stadium owner that would then deprive the audience of their performance.”
In his statement, Sheeran, one of the world’s best-selling and most-streamed artists, said he was “not complicit” and defended his silence around “the conflict between Israel and Palestine.”
“I have my personal views on this devastating conflict,” he said. “Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
The children’s entertainer and advocate Ms. Rachel, who has been a leading humanitarian critic of the war in Gaza, called Sheeran out for his public neutrality, writing on Instagram, “Ed Sheeran is making a political statement to his fans when he does a concert to support Ukraine, but considers Palestine too dangerous and political.”
Beyond his fellow tour members quitting in protest, Macklemore received nods of support from Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal and the musicians Zara Larsson and PinkPantheress.
In his statement, Macklemore sought to refocus attention on Gaza, where more than 70,000 people — many of them women and children — have been killed.
Sheeran “told me that the words ‘Free Palestine’ and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with,” Macklemore said.
“I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood.”
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