Macklemore found the Shape of Ed Sheeran’s politics

There’s something uniquely irritating about watching one of the most successful musicians alive discover that he’s apparently powerless over his own tour. This is the central miracle of the increasingly ridiculous Ed Sheeran-Macklemore situation, which began with Macklemore saying “Free Palestine” during his opening set at MetLife Stadium and has somehow ended, for the moment, with Sheeran explaining that he simply couldn’t prevent Macklemore from being removed. While virtually everyone else involved in the tour decided that, actually, they can do something about it and left on their own.

You really couldn’t design a more perfect demonstration of the problem with Ed Sheeran’s response if you locked six comedy writers in a room and fed them cocaine after watching ten back-to-back episodes of Veep.

Here’s the sequence.

Macklemore performed at MetLife on September 4, where he gave a speech about Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank before performing “Hind’s Hall,” his protest song inspired by the Columbia University encampment movement. He said “Free Palestine,” thanked several student groups including Jewish Voice for Peace, and explicitly told his “Jewish brothers and sisters” that criticism of Israel and opposition to genocide weren’t criticisms of them.

Robert Kraft, Epstein-file-billionaire owner of the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, subsequently confirmed that Macklemore wouldn’t be allowed to perform at Gillette. He said Macklemore’s recent performances and what he characterized as a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery crossed the stadium’s line against hate speech. Then, according to Sheeran, other venues threatened to pull his shows if Macklemore remained on the tour. They have to save room for Kanye West, after all, who suspiciously hasn’t been blacklisted despite having a song that is explicitly antisemitic. Nevertheless.

Ed Sheeran says he spent the week talking to venues, promoters, and activists trying to find a compromise. But eventually Messina Touring Group removed Macklemore entirely. Sheeran would now like everyone to understand one very important thing about this sequence of events. That the decision technically wasn’t his. He’s just a little baby boy without any agency whatsoever. Who knew.

Who among us controls the Ed Sheeran tour?

“Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision, not mine,” Sheeran wrote. Adding that Macklemore’s contract was with the promoter rather than with him. And yes, this may be contractually accurate. I’m perfectly willing to believe Ed Sheeran doesn’t personally sit in a little office stamping APPROVED and REJECTED across every employment agreement associated with his stadium tour. There are promoters, venue contracts, insurers, managers, lawyers and hundreds of other people whose jobs probably involve sending emails that begin “Per my last email.”

But come the fuck on. It’s the Ed Sheeran Loop Tour. The advertisements don’t say MESSINA TOURING GROUP, featuring Ed Sheeran if scheduling permits. And nobody bought a ticket because they couldn’t believe they were finally going to see contractual counterparty Messina Touring Group live in concert.

So the real question is what Sheeran was willing to do when powerful venue owners told him they wouldn’t host his tour with Macklemore on it. He could’ve challenged the venues. Canceled dates, Explored relocation. Maybe publicly objected to the ultimatum while acknowledging that the promoter controlled Macklemore’s contract. Or just continued under the new arrangement. And every one of those options presumably came with its own financial and logistical nightmare.

Well, here’s what he did. Sheeran chose to continue the tour without Macklemore and then wrote a statement emphasizing all the reasons that outcome shouldn’t be understood simply as his decision. That’s where his explanation starts tying itself into knots, because “I didn’t have a choice” and “I didn’t like any of my choices” are two very different things. At this point, we might as well rename the Streisand Effect to the Macklemore Effect.

Then everyone else started quitting.

Sheeran had another explanation for why he couldn’t simply cancel shows. Fans had bought tickets, booked hotels and arranged travel. Also, thousands of workers depend on a stadium tour. And his band and supporting artists had their own livelihoods to consider.

Unfortunately for Sheeran, the people he invoked in his defense began leaving in droves. Aaron Rowe withdrew, then Beoga, Lukas Graham, and Finneas followed. With Beoga’s departure especially awkward given the group’s long association with Sheeran. By September 15, all four remaining supporting acts had pulled out. And as of Friday morning, Sheeran still hasn’t publicly responded to their departures. Even though his next show is Saturday in Philadelphia.

Sheeran’s argument was essentially, Whatever I personally believe, I have responsibilities to all these other people. Hilariously, these people responded by demonstrating that they, too, had weighed professional obligations against personal convictions and reached their own conclusions. Leaving Sheeran in the unenviable position of being the most spineless person in this situation.

But wait, it gets funnier.

The universe, meanwhile, has decided subtlety is for cowards. Guitar Center happens to be running an “Open for Legends” competition whose inaugural prize is opening for Sheeran at his December show in Mexico City.

This is real.

OK, to be fair, the promotion predates this implosion. But after Ed Sheeran’s actual support acts walked, users promptly flooded the competition with protest and joke submissions badly enough that Guitar Center had to remind everyone that only “legitimate” musicians would be considered.

Still. Imagine losing your opening acts in a political revolt and then watching an unrelated Guitar Center contest to find you another one become part of the revolt. At a certain point you have to wonder whether God has hired Armando Iannucci to direct this entire news cycle.

Please keep politics out of this extremely political situation.

Sheeran’s insistence that he doesn’t use his professional platform for politics is laughable. “There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics,” he wrote. Explaining that his concerts are about “unity, joy, escapism, love” and creating a place where people from different backgrounds can feel welcome.

This would be a perfectly intelligible artistic philosophy in almost any situation except the one currently happening to him.

An artist was removed from his tour after giving a speech about Israel and Palestine. A billionaire stadium owner who’s been credibly accused of sex crimes publicly confirmed that he wouldn’t allow that artist to perform at his venue. Then allegedly made it is his personal mission to get the other venues to rip the microphone out of Macklemore’s hand.

Ed, buddy, the politics are already inside the building.

They came through security, bought a $19 beer and apparently have better seats than most of the people who flew in for the show.

Calling the concert itself apolitical doesn’t resolve the contradiction because the argument now concerns who gets to participate in that supposedly apolitical space. Continuing the tour is one response to the situation. Canceling shows, challenging the venues or accepting Macklemore’s removal would each be another. Even silence would leave the new arrangement intact, so there isn’t a secret fifth option where Sheeran crawls into a little apolitical burrow until everyone stops asking him questions.

Sheeran has also publicly engaged with political causes before, including expressing solidarity with Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. That doesn’t obligate him to speak about every war or adopt Macklemore’s views. But it does make “I do not use my professional platform for politics” an unusually broad description of his own record.

The more defensible position would simply be that Sheeran chooses when he thinks political expression belongs on his platform. That’s what virtually every public figure does anyway. And it would at least acknowledge that “apolitical” isn’t a force field that activates whenever the subject becomes even the slightest bit inconvenient.

“Unity, Joy, Escapism, Love” for some.

The appeal to “unity, joy, escapism, love” becomes slippery for another reason. Those words sound wonderfully meaningful until they’re asked to describe anything specific. Unity among whom? Love expressed how? Who gets to feel welcome? And what happens when making one part of an audience comfortable requires restricting what somebody else says?

This is the inevitable problem with using universal virtues as substitutes for actual positions. Because virtually everybody supports love and peace in the abstract. Put LOVE behind Sheeran in 80-foot letters while he sings a ballad and half the stadium will film it vertically. The trouble begins when you have to ascribe love with nouns.

Macklemore’s position certainly has nouns. Palestinians, Gaza, Israel, children, bombs, and governments. He’s making an argument that can be agreed with, disputed, scrutinized, and criticized precisely because he actually states what he believes. Sheeran’s statement moves in the opposite direction. Toward words so universal and frictionless that nobody could possibly object to them. Until now.

It’s politics reduced to the inspirational-lettering section at Target, complete with a tasteful piece of driftwood telling you to LIVE LAUGH LOVE while the world burns around you. Worse, Sheeran says his approach is to “keep conversations open, not closed.” That’s an extraordinary way to describe a situation in which the controversial speaker has literally been removed from the lineup.

Whatever anyone thinks about Macklemore’s speech, removing the speaker is at minimum an unusual advertisement for keeping the conversation open. If that’s the open version, I would love to see what Sheeran considers closed.

Apparently everyone is taking a different road to peace

Ed Sheeran then produces perhaps my favorite sentence in the entire statement. “There is room for multiple approaches to the same end: peace.” Sure, why not? Apparently everyone involved is merely taking a different scenic route to Peace Town, and Google Maps is having an absolute ball trying to keep up.

Let’s take a look at these different approaches, shall we? First, Macklemore’s approach is publicly advocating for Palestinians. Kraft’s approach is refusing to let Macklemore perform at Gillette Stadium. While other venue operators’ approach was reportedly threatening to cancel Sheeran’s shows. And Sheeran’s approach is to keep his own political opinions private while continuing the tour as if nothing happened. (We’ll get to the donations).

Different approaches! Same destination, presumably somewhere just past the merch table.

Let’s be real. Describing this particular conflict as though everybody merely has different techniques for pursuing the same uncontroversial objective when the disagreement concerns what people should be allowed to say, where they should be allowed to say it, and what consequences should follow is an absolute farce.

There’s no incidental disagreement obscuring the underlying consensus. That’s the fucking disagreement. And putting the word “peace” over it doesn’t make everyone suddenly discover they’ve been on the same team all along. Sorry, Ed, a lot of people don’t want to be on the same team as genocide-deniers.

Macklemore’s maybe being too generous.

The contrast becomes even stranger when you read Macklemore’s response, largely because he declined the much easier option of publicly telling Ed Sheeran to go fuck himself. Instead, he called Sheeran his friend, talked about knowing him for 13 years, sharing stages and late-night studio sessions, and having difficult private conversations with him over the preceding weeks.

Macklemore described their disagreement as fundamental but said he wasn’t writing from spite. More importantly, he began by arguing that he wasn’t the victim. Sheeran wasn’t the victim and Pink wasn’t the victim. Famous musicians can lose money, opportunities and access and still return safely to their families. So Palestinians enduring systemic violence are the people he wants his fans thinking about.

It’s frankly rude of Macklemore to be this conciliatory because it makes the contrast between the two statements that much sharper. One keeps dragging the conversation outward toward the political issue supposedly worth fighting about. And the other keeps dragging it inward toward whoever held which contract, why the tour must continue, and why its headliner shouldn’t be treated as the sole author of what happened.

Match-me-more.

You can dislike Macklemore’s politics, his speech, or his music without missing that difference. God has not demanded that anyone put “Thrift Shop” back into rotation as penance. And acknowledging the contrast between the two statements doesn’t require pretending “Downtown” isn’t six different songs attempting to escape from the same trench coat.

Macklemore has since managed to make this contrast even more uncomfortable. On Wednesday, he announced that he’s donating the entire $1 million in net earnings he made from the Loop Tour to six organizations providing aid to Palestinians. He then invited Kraft to match him. Which is a fairly effective way of answering a controversy about whether you’re willing to pay a price for your politics.

It also makes Sheeran’s repeated appeals to the economic consequences of taking a stand land differently. Macklemore’s answer to losing access, relationships, and future opportunities was to put a dollar figure on what he was already losing. Whatever else you think about the man, he’s making it remarkably difficult to argue that he doesn’t mean what he says.

To Sheeran’s credit, there’s now evidence that his private response hasn’t amounted to nothing. Kraft says Sheeran had already contacted him before Macklemore’s challenge and committed $2 million to humanitarian aid, asking Kraft to match it. Kraft agreed, although neither man’s announcement identified where that money would actually go. We’re not exactly holding our breath.

But at the very least, this also prompted Ms. Rachel—the woman whose professional platform is so aggressively for children that half her audience is still developing object permanence—to pledge $1 million of her own money to Palestinian relief in response to Macklemore’s donation.

This isn’t about antisemitism (and never was).

Kraft’s stated reason for barring Macklemore is that the artist crossed a line into material harmful to Jewish people. And he cites what he describes as a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery.

Macklemore does have a relevant controversy in his past. In 2014, he performed wearing a costume widely criticized as resembling an antisemitic caricature. He then apologized and said the resemblance was unintentional. Antisemitism is real, and accusations of it warrant serious attention rather than automatic dismissal because somebody agrees with the accused person’s politics.

But Macklemore’s MetLife speech explicitly told Jewish listeners that his criticism of Israel and opposition to genocide weren’t criticisms of them. And he thanked Jewish Voice for Peace while calling for Palestinian freedom alongside freedom for people in Lebanon, Cuba, Congo, and Sudan.

Kraft argues that Macklemore’s broader record and presentation nevertheless crossed Gillette’s line. While Macklemore argues that accusations of antisemitism are being used to suppress criticism of Israel. What doesn’t survive much scrutiny is pretending the resulting decision somehow exists outside politics.

What exactly does Ed Sheeran have to lose?

The final ingredient making Sheeran’s helplessness so difficult to take seriously is his extraordinary wealth and power. Most people understand compromise because most people spend their lives making compromises they can’t afford to avoid. You bite your tongue at work because you need the paycheck. Tolerate the awful client because rent is due. Or choose the shitty option because every alternative requires a monthly subscription.

Ed Sheeran has fuck-you money. That’s one of the perks! You accumulate an amount of wealth that would cause a medieval peasant to assume you’re a child of the sun. And in exchange you eventually acquire an unusual degree of freedom to absorb consequences that would ruin an ordinary person.

That doesn’t mean refusing the venues would’ve been painless. Canceling stadium shows would affect workers and fans. Finding replacements could be impossible on short notice. And contractual penalties could be enormous. Those considerations are real, and pretending otherwise would make the criticism considerably weaker.

They also return us to the obvious fact that Sheeran had leverage. So did the venues. And everyone involved decided how much professional or financial pain they were prepared to accept right before folding.

No wonder the other support acts demonstrated, rather inconveniently for them, that continuing wasn’t the only imaginable response. Their circumstances certainly differed from Sheeran’s in important ways. Yet they still chose to leave while he chose to stay.

Actually, you are complicit.

That’s ultimately what’s missing from Ed Sheeran’s statement: ownership. Acknowledging a tradeoff. Instead, the promoter made the decision, the venues created the problem, contracts constrained him, the crew depended on him, the fans needed the shows, politics doesn’t belong at his concerts, his personal beliefs remain private, everybody wants peace and, if everyone could please locate their seats, the performance will begin shortly and “I am not complicit.”

So please spare us the little-guy routine, because you’re Ed Sheeran. If even the guy with his name printed across the fucking stadium can’t admit that staying onstage is a decision, “apolitical” hasn’t protected him from politics at all. But it has just given him a nicer word for the decision he already made a long time ago.