{"id":616362,"date":"2026-09-15T02:14:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T02:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/616362\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T02:14:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T02:14:28","slug":"macklemore-dropped-from-ed-sheeran-tour-over-free-palestine-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/616362\/","title":{"rendered":"Macklemore Dropped From Ed Sheeran Tour Over ‘Free Palestine’ Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMacklemore<\/a> has been dismissed from his role as opener on the U.S. leg of Ed Sheeran<\/a>\u2018s ongoing tour following the rapper\u2019s \u201cfree Palestine\u201d comments at a show.<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesperson for Messina Touring<\/a> Group told Rolling Stone<\/a> on Monday (Sept. 14) that \u201cas the concert promoter for Ed Sheeran\u2019s U.S. Loop Tour, we have been notified by venues on the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs this would apparently \u201cresult in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans,\u201d the team said. \u201cAfter discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMacklemore responded shortly afterward <\/a>with a lengthy statement alleging that Sheeran was given an ultimatum by Robert Kraft and other NFL stadium owners who refused to allow the tour to stop through their venues so long as the rapper was on the bill. \u201cEd was in a f\u2013ked up position,\u201d Macklemore wrote. \u201cHe told me that the words \u2018Free Palestine\u2019 and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBillboard has reached out to reps for Sheeran and Kraft for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe development comes less than two weeks after the \u201cThrift Shop\u201d artist sparked controversy on the first night of his now-scrapped opening stint by saying on stage at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, \u201cA big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want those words to be loud and clear, so that people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten about them,\u201d he\u2019d continued. <\/p>\n

\n\tMacklemore has long been one of the most vocal artists in his support of Palestinians, dropping protest song <\/a>\u201cHind\u2019s Hall\u201d \u2014 which he performed on stage before Sheeran\u2019s set at MetLife \u2014 in 2024. On the track, he spits, \u201cWhere does genocide land in your definition, huh\/ Destroyin\u2019 every college in Gaza and every mosque\/ Pushin\u2019 everyone into Rafah and droppin\u2019 bombs \u2026 We see the lies in \u2019em\/ Claimin\u2019 it\u2019s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist\/ I\u2019ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and ridin\u2019 in\/ Solidarity and screamin\u2019 free Palestine with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter his \u201cfree Palestine\u201d plea on Sheeran\u2019s tour, the Israeli-American Council published a petition <\/a>to remove Macklemore from the rest of the U.S. leg. Pink also reshared a post<\/a> calling for the rapper to be dropped from the trek and explained her point of view shortly afterward when people started criticizing her for it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLast weekend [Macklemore] stood in front of a stadium full of music-loving families, with violent images from a war on the screens, dedicated a song to the movement of his choice, and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn\u2019t about them,\u201d she wrote. \u201cYou don\u2019t get to decide that for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut as Macklemore stated on his second night opening for Sheeran at MetLife, \u201cTo all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial,\u201d he also wrote on X<\/a> a couple of days later.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe next Loop Tour show will take place Saturday (Sept. 19) in Philadelphia, featuring Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe, who were Macklemore\u2019s co-openers. Sheeran has dates planned in the U.S. through Nov. 7, after which he\u2019ll travel through Latin America with Finneas as opener through mid-December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Macklemore has been dismissed from his role as opener on the U.S. leg of Ed Sheeran\u2018s ongoing tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1934,2646,42,1098,43,145148,40,38,41,39,88195],"class_list":["post-616362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-genre-hiphop","tag-genre-pop","tag-headlines","tag-music-news","tag-news","tag-nsfs","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-touring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}