Macklemore Dropped From Ed Sheeran Tour Over His ‘Free Palestine’ Comments
The decision came after venues allegedly threatened to cancel tour dates with the rapper on the bill.
Macklemore has been dismissed from his role as opener on the U.S. leg of Ed Sheeran‘s ongoing tour following the rapper’s “free Palestine” comments at a show.
A spokesperson for Messina Touring Group told Rolling Stone on Monday (Sept. 14) that “as the concert promoter for Ed Sheeran’s 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.”
As this would apparently “result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans,” the team said. “After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.”
Billboard has reached out to reps for Macklemore and Sheeran for comment.
The development comes less than two weeks after the “Thrift Shop” artist sparked controversy on the first night of his now-scrapped opening stint by saying on stage at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, “A 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.”
“I 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,” he’d continued.
Macklemore has long been one of the most vocal artists in his support of Palestinians, dropping protest song “Hind’s Hall” — which he performed on stage before Sheeran’s set at MetLife — in 2024. On the track, he spits, “Where does genocide land in your definition, huh/ Destroyin’ every college in Gaza and every mosque/ Pushin’ everyone into Rafah and droppin’ bombs … We see the lies in ’em/ Claimin’ it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist/ I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and ridin’ in/ Solidarity and screamin’ free Palestine with them.”
After his “free Palestine” plea on Sheeran’s tour, the Israeli-American Council published a petition to remove Macklemore from the rest of the U.S. leg. Pink also reshared a post 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.
“Last 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’t about them,” she wrote. “You don’t get to decide that for us.”
But as Macklemore stated on his second night opening for Sheeran at MetLife, “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.”
“Wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial,” he also wrote on X a couple of days later.
The next Loop Tour show will take place Saturday (Sept. 19) in Philadelphia, featuring Lukas Graham andAaron Rowe, who were Macklemore’s co-openers. Sheeran has dates planned in the U.S. through Nov. 7, after which he’ll travel through Latin America with Finneas as opener through mid-December.
