Macklemore Kicked Off Ed Sheeran Tour for Pro-Palestine Comments

Ed Sheeran has booted Macklemore from his U.S. tour after venues threatened to cancel shows over the rapper’s pro-Palestine comments, Macklemore said in a statement. Macklemore also accused Robert Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, of threatening to pull Sheeran’s concert if the rapper was not removed as a support act. Kraft rallied the owners of the other tour venues to follow suit, according to Macklemore, prompting Sheeran’s team and Messina Touring Group to kick him off the bill.

“Ed was in a fucked up position,” Macklemore wrote of his longtime friend and “brother,” adding that they had spoken multiple times about the matter on the phone. “He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before.” Sheeran told Macklemore that people objected to the phrase “Free Palestine,” uttered during the rapper’s two prior support dates on the tour. (That and other comments irked, among others, Pink, who said, at the center of her own subsequent firestorm, “What I need is to be able to say, as a Jewish mom, ‘that scared me, and it scared people I love.’”) Macklemore, in his telling, responded to Sheeran that those words should not be “more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel.” Sheeran, Macklemore added, “couldn’t get past his public facing, ‘I don’t take sides’…. [But] when one side has bombs and the bottomless financial and military support from America, refusing to take a side doesn’t leave you in the middle.”

Macklemore added that he has been speaking in support of Palestine on stage for almost three years. “So why is it an issue now? Because now I’m sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, ‘Free Palestine’ becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that’s why this time it became so important to silence me.” He also said his friendship with Sheeran would not “disappear because of one painful disagreement.”

A representative for Messina Touring Group confirmed to Pitchfork that multiple tour venues said they would “not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup.” The company, which is part of AEG, added that Macklemore had been dropped “after discussions with stakeholders.” The promoter, according to Rolling Stone, said the following venues had joined Kraft’s Gillette Stadium in objecting to Macklemore: Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia; Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta; Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis; Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte; AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas; and Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. Pitchfork has emailed those venues for comment.