Macklemore pulled from Ed Sheeran's US tour after 'Free Palestine' remarks

Ed Sheeran plays Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on September 25 and 26 without the opener he started the US leg with. Macklemore said "Free Palestine" from the stage at MetLife Stadium on September 4, and on September 14 the tour's promoter, Messina Touring Group, took him off the remaining US dates, citing venues that would not host the show with him on the bill. The Gillette owner, Robert Kraft, barred him by name. Sheeran has called the removal "the promoter's decision."

What was said at MetLife

Opening for Sheeran in front of about 80,000 people, Macklemore wore a keffiyeh and played Hind's Hall with Gaza footage on the stadium screens. He told the crowd he took the tour so he could "stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine," per Billboard. The next night he spoke to Jewish fans directly: "Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide, is in no way a criticism of you."

The Israeli-American Council petitioned Sheeran to drop him and the Anti-Defamation League called the remarks "completely unacceptable." Kraft's statement, reported by Variety, said Gillette Stadium would not "provide a platform for hate speech" and pointed to "a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery." It also said the decision was "not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians."

His answer, and the openers who left

Macklemore replied on Instagram: "I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim." He wrote that Sheeran told him the words and the flag "were hurtful to a lot of people," and that he answered that if those words were more offensive than Palestinian children being killed, there was "a fundamental disconnect." On September 16 he pledged his full $1M in tour earnings to six Palestinian relief organizations. Kraft announced a $2M donation of his own; the coverage did not name who receives it.

The other openers quit on September 15. Finneas: "Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed. I stand with Palestine and its people." Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe and Beoga left too. P!nk, who had reshared a post calling the set "anti-Israel propaganda," later said the words were not hers: "A repost isn't a statement, and a meme isn't a spine."

A 2024 song back on the chart

Hind's Hall came out in May 2024. It is named for the Columbia building students renamed after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old killed in Gaza on January 29, 2024. Israeli tank fire hit her family's car and killed six relatives; she stayed on the phone with the Palestine Red Crescent for about three hours, and the two paramedics sent for her were killed too. Her body was found twelve days later. The track samples Fairuz and its royalties were pledged to UNRWA.

The removal sent listeners back to the song. Billboard's figures:

Philadelphia

Sheeran's first show after the removal was September 19 at Lincoln Financial Field, with every opener gone and about 50 protesters outside. Before playing, he said, per CNN: "I've had to take and make difficult decisions and I am making mistakes and I'm so, so sorry." He called the violence in Gaza "catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate" and the October 7 attack "horrific."

The two go back more than a decade. Sheeran featured on Growing Up (Sloane's Song) by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis in 2015, and joined Macklemore on stage at the iHeartRadio Music Festival. In Philadelphia Sheeran called the week before "one of the worst weeks of my life," and the show that night "the best show of my life."