I hate to make light of someone’s suffering, but in the case of Ed Sheeran this week I think it’s important to keep some perspective.
The Quiet Should Be Nice But Isn’t
I’m neither an Ed Sheeran fan nor hater. He’s got some good songs and obviously knows how to write to a broad audience – that’s a talent in and of itself. I still enjoy The A Team from time to time, but that era of Ed Sheeran was both sort of where I hopped on and off the bandwagon. He’s otherwise just sort of been like the local city metro, relatively consistent in its delivery, but sometimes leaving more to be desired.
Anyway, if you’ve been under a rock all of last week, then you don’t know he’s been under fire – and that might not be the best way to describe it, given the context of the situation.
It’s been a bit of a humorous sequence of events that has unfolded since. If you don’t already know the context, I’ll keep it brief:
Ed Sheeran is currently on the Loop tour and had prolific activist Macklemore opening for him. Macklemore being Macklemore used some of his stage time to address the genocide in Palestine with tact and grace. Rebel-rouser and fellow music artist Pink, who was an unforeseen catalyst in the events to follow and is otherwise in no way involved in the tour, didn’t like this and spoke up out against his use of free speech as a fellow artist.
Here’s Macklemore’s speech:
This prompted the beginning of a global internet-savvy mob scene which caused enough feathers to ruffle that it reached Robert Kraft, a multi-billionaire (15.2 billion dollar net worth according to Forbes) who owns one of the stadiums hosting Ed on tour, who promptly decided he no longer wanted Macklemore to be allowed to perform at the stadium and allegedly reached out to Ed directly to cry about it.
Multi-millionaire Ed Sheeran then decided to appease his multi-billionaire host overlord as it would allow his tour to continue if he simply kicked his former friend of 13 years (according to Macklemore) or, “guy who asked to open for me” (according to Sheeran) firmly in the ass and off the mighty ship that is the Loop tour.
Ed Sheeran cited the importance of keeping the peace in the war zone that is the Loop Tour and its travelling circus of well fed entertainers in favour of simply acknowledging the very real and ongoing genocide of Palestinians in their very real and active war zone which has claimed nearly 74,000 lives, mostly women and children, since the October 7th attacks that were in no way the first instance of conflict between Israel and Palestine despite what Ed Sheeran seems to believe or understand about the situation at this time. Apparently he doesn’t even carry a cellphone which is another way of saying he doesn’t really need to stay in-tune with the rest of the world – an incredible privilege in our growing capitalist hellscape.
Now, none of that is really the funny part. In fact this situation is mostly just sad all around, however when Ed Sheeran acknowledged Macklemore’s removal from the tour he cited responsibility to take care of the other opening acts and his backing band as his reasoning and they responded by… jumping into the shark infested waters with Macklemore instead of staying on the sturdy dry ship, by which I mean tour. Ugh, metaphors, what are they good for?
I’m Tired Of All The War You Bring Home
What Ed Sheeran did not see as he sat in his crown-jewelled entertainer-heroes quarters is that from the moment that Macklemore was removed from this tour, the ship had sprung a leak. A relatively small leak in the grand scheme of things and nothing the ship wouldn’t be able to handle, however the ship captain then has a responsibility to appropriately patch the leak, less it grow and flood the engine room, or worse, sink the ship whole.
Nobody in Ed Sheeran’s circle seemed to be concerned enough about this leak to properly inform him of the potential damage is could do and so for what felt like ages, Ed Sheeran didn’t really say much of anything at all and assumed the hole would patch itself.
It didn’t, of course, and then his fellow ship sailor soldiers, sensing the danger both in the shark infested waters around them and the shark infested ship, chose to the best of their abilities and values which action to take next.
For the sake of brevity just about everyone associated with the tour then removed themselves from the future dates leaving Ed Sheeran alone at the wheel of a vessel he has never steered himself with harsh winds bellowing all through the day and night.
And I’m sorry but that shit was super fucking funny.
It’s insane that this situation had any other outcome other than the most logical one where Ed Sheeran backs up his fellow artists and the Palestinian people. I’m going to dumb it down substantially because that seems necessary at this point.
All Ed had to do here was acknowledge a genocide and he still has been unable to do so. This is what people are really upset about – not the decision to remove Macklemore, the decision to ignore the existence of deliberate ongoing suffering. It’s a humanitarian issue, not an artist issue.
When he finally took a moment to address this situation at his Philadelphia tour stop, he still managed to fuck that up, too. He’s “still learning” he says as though to humble himself, which has the adverse effect of actually pulling himself further away from the plight of everyday non-multi-millionaire people.
Better Get Busy
I wanted to give Ed kudos for finally taking a moment to talk about the issue, even if he chose a stadium full of his legion of supporters to do so. Rest assured, anyone that was able to obtained a refund or simply refused to attend the show, so it’s safe to assume anyone who was in the audience that day wasn’t going to give Ed any flack – this was the safe place that Ed says he tries to cultivate for his fans but on this date in particular it could not be more obvious that this is really a safe space for him.
He read a poorly worded pre-written speech from a teleprompter that lacked the heart and sincerity we saw with Macklemore and I can at least speak for myself in saying that by the time he finished it, I didn’t really believe that he either understood or really cared about what he was speaking towards as he tried to both-sides the issue. The problem with it is you can’t really both-sides a genocide. You’re either for the murder and suffering of people or against it. Ed, apparently, is understanding of both the murderers and the murderee’s difficult predicament.
Now I’m not saying he is actively in favour of war or murder, but he was clearly trying to do damage control for his tour, his livelihood and his own ego above all else and he couldn’t help but prove that as the concert carried on.
Later, without a teleprompter aid, Ed let us in to what was really bothering him.
“The last week of my life has been one of the worst weeks of my life,” he says, holding back tears at various periods.
“I really didn’t know whether this tour would be carrying on,” he continues.
“In these situations, you really find out who your friends are.” I let out an exasperated sigh.
Somewhere in Gaza a drone is sniping out its next victim.
Somewhere in Gaza a child is succumbing to malnutrition.
Somewhere in Gaza a woman has taken her last breath.
But yes, go on and take your moment to turn our attention back to your suffering from your air conditioned stadium tour, Ed, you absolute fucking donkey of a man.
“I am doing this for you. I love you,” he says to the legion.
It’s unclear if they all accept this as truth, but we can assume many of them do.
The conversation around whether or not artists and celebrities have a responsibility to respond to political issues is one that could encapsulate an entire series of blogs, but at its core this isn’t really about artists or celebrities at all. It’s about people caring about other people, whether or not they choose people over profits and if we have enough collective empathy to fight together against the gross injustices that plague our world as a whole. It’s not an artists responsibility, it’s everyone’s responsibility – choosing the abstain from the Loop Tour is just one small way us underlings are able to protest the genocide at this time and I am elated that the vast majority of artists who were originally scheduled to perform it made the sane choice in removing themselves from it and did so swiftly.
It’s unclear to me if Ed Sheeran will ever fully recover from this fallout, but I don’t particularly care if he does. While this has been a PR-nightmare for Ed, it really really pales in comparison to the war and destruction that continues today.
Crazy to think that all he had to do was say Free Palestine. We need to ask him why that’s so hard for him to do.
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