EVERY CORPORATE-SPONSORED SPORTSBALL STADIUM, USA (The Daily Whatever Press)—Ed Sheeran has released albums literally titled +, ×, ÷, =, and −. Every basic arithmetic operation, as a bit, for 15 years. And this week, the one sum that actually mattered—do you keep a guy on your tour after a billionaire tells you not to, or don’t you?—he couldn’t do.
Turns out “I don’t take sides” was never a personality. It was a parking spot he was renting from Robert Kraft, and this week Kraft asked for it back.
Here’s what actually happened: Macklemore opened for Sheeran at MetLife Stadium on September 4 and 5, said “Free Palestine” from the stage, showed footage from Gaza, and performed his song “Hind’s Hall,” an 18-month-old protest anthem named for the Columbia University building students renamed after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl killed in Gaza in January 2024.
Kraft—billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, owner of Gillette Stadium, mentioned in the Epstein files, owner of an opinion he was fully entitled to and also fully entitled to keep to himself—told Sheeran’s team Macklemore wasn’t playing his building on September 25 and 26.
According to Macklemore, Kraft then rallied the other stadium owners into a group ultimatum: cut Macklemore from the tour, or lose the venues for the rest of the Loop Tour’s run through Raymond James Stadium in November.
Sheeran cut him.
“I Am Not Complicit,” said the man who just outsourced a political decision to a football owner
Then Sheeran posted a statement, and reader, it is a genre unto itself. He called himself “appalled” by the conflict, called the suffering on both sides a human tragedy, said he’d personally been trying to broker peace between promoters. Very Thinking Out Loud, if the thinking happened entirely in private and the “out loud” part was a press release. And then the line I want engraved somewhere: “I am not complicit.”
Sir. You let a stadium owner decide who gets to say “Free Palestine” on your own stage, and then you wrote a paragraph insisting that staying silent doesn’t mean you don’t have opinions, it just means you’re saving them for what, your diary? A new song lyric, one day? My kids figured out that “I don’t want to talk about it” isn’t a neutral position by age 11. It’s a stance. It’s just a stance that always, conveniently, ends up compliant with whoever owns the stadium. He built a Castle on the Hill, and the second the view got complicated, he pulled up the drawbridge.
Even the guy’s own band quit on him
This is the part that should’ve told Sheeran everything: it wasn’t only Macklemore’s replacement acts walking. Sure, Aaron Rowe walked. Lukas Graham walked, thanking Sheeran on the way out like he was leaving a genuinely great job, which, emotionally, he was. Finneas walked too, writing that “artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed.” And then Beoga—his own backing band, the Irish musicians who’d been standing behind him onstage for over a decade of friendship—walked, saying they were leaving “following the silencing of Macklemore by zionist lobbies.” For a guy who’s put his name on a song called “Antisocial,” he sure needed his entire social circle to say the thing he wouldn’t.
That’s not an opener with a grudge. That’s the band that plays behind you every night, looking at the back of your head, deciding oh hell no to this.
And that’s not weird until you remember Kraft never actually denied organizing the other venues, which only matters because it means the guy famous for refusing to take a side got out-neutraled by his own backing band, playing traditional Irish instruments, at a stadium show, in America, in 2026.
Oh. Oh no.
Everyone else managed to have an opinion but Ed
Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal took Macklemore’s side. So did Zara Larsson and PinkPantheress. Pink took the other side, publicly backing his removal and dragging his 2014 costume back into the conversation on her way out. The Israeli-American Council weighed in too, arguing Sheeran hadn’t gone far enough. That’s the entire spectrum of public opinion in America, on the record, names attached—everyone except the one guy who had a literal stage and two and a half hours a night and somehow came up with nothing to Sing about.
The verdict
Both of us behind this show are Jewish, and here’s our actual position, because we think you deserve one. Criticizing the Israeli government, naming civilian deaths, using the word “genocide”—and that’s the word both of us are comfortable using, as humans with you know, eyes—none of that is antisemitic on its face, and treating it as automatically antisemitic is its own bad-faith move.
None of that gets Sheeran off the hook. “This is genuinely complicated” was always an available public position. He didn’t take that one, either. He took the one where he said nothing, let a billionaire make the call, and then wrote a paragraph claiming the silence was principled. “I refuse to find out” isn’t nuance; it’s the thing people mistake for nuance when they’d rather not do the work.
Neutrality was never actually on the table, not once a billionaire made a phone call. Sheeran had a real option: he could have canceled the Gillette dates himself, said why, and let the Jewish fans he claims to be worried about hear an actual reason. What’s the good in being a super successful pop star if not telling the billionaire oligarchs to fuck off? According to Google, Sheeran’s net worth hovers around $400 million. He could afford it.
Instead he picked the version where four acts, his own backing band, a pop star, and a policy council all had to say the thing he wouldn’t, and hoped nobody noticed he’d let a stadium owner write his politics for him with his Eyes Closed.
Don’t side with bossy billionaire dudes–in this, and nearly all things.
We’re gonna leave you—and Ed, if you’re out there reading—with some deep-cut lyrics, from the final chorus his song “Regrets.”
We suspect he may be having a few.
“Regrets
I'm not sayin' it's all in my head
But I can't help thinkin' what's next
When tomorrow is all we got left
Confessing regrets
Why's there distance when we're right here?
Is the anger just proof we care?
And love and war is not fair
Confessing regrets.”
Thanks for reading!
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Great piece. I agree with what is written here. Also...Jewish
I love this article so very much! Your voice carries infinite weight on this topic. Too often the phrases are thrown around by well meaning people but they are only examining a narrow window of horrors. Too often the phrases are heard as if they are physical shards of glass being thrown personally at them because of their lived experiences. And instantly battle lines are drawn, “weapons” are chosen. Some use truly vile rhetoric meant to wound the sparring opponents in this unforgiving moral battle. Too often what is lost are the actual facts which are so difficult to separate from the insurmountable emotional weight that surrounds and permeates throughout it all. There are NOT two sides. There is only one side and that is humanity. What is acceptable and what is unacceptable are two sides of each and every assault on humanity by any means.