Ed Sheeran performed at Lincoln Financial Field on Sept. 19 for the first time since his controversy with fellow artist Macklemore. The disagreement began when Macklemore was removed from Sheeran’s tour for speaking about his views on the Palestinian-Israeli War, saying “Free Palestine”. Multiple venue owners objected to Macklemore’s pro-Palestine advocacy and refused to allow Sheeran to perform at their stadiums with Macklemore. As a result, the tour promoter dropped Macklemore, and the media has been abuzz since.
The rest of Ed Sheeran’s openers—including Finneas, Lukas Graham, and Aaron Rowe—and his backup band Beoga dropped out of the tour in response. Pro-Palestine protesters lined up outside the Philadelphia arena before the show.
Now, it seems like listening to an Ed Sheeran song will get you blasted on the internet. Should people boycott his music to show where they stand? This was the question I asked myself after I heard the news, because I had tickets to that Philadelphia show.
As Sheeran opened his show, he seemed nervous, reading his speech off a prompter. He mentioned how he prefers his shows to be free from politics because there are kids from all sorts of backgrounds. He brought up the war between Israel and Palestine, saying, “This is a humanitarian issue… What happened in Israel at the Nova Music Festival on October 7th was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.” Later, after gaining more courage, he announced he would continue the tour alone because he loves to see the unity as he plays.
Sheeran mentioned that he’d lost friends and family members over the controversy. However, his show was the opposite of what he was expecting. There were 60,000 people in the stands, cheering him on. Even though he was one man with his guitar, he played for three hours straight, telling the audience stories about each of the songs he had written. He mentioned how he usually has a B-Stage, but had to remove it because he was worried people might throw things at him. Sheeran’s show felt more intimate, with him breaking down multiple times on stage. He acknowledged that he’d made mistakes in the past and wanted people to just have fun.
Most of Sheeran’s songs were performed with him using a loop pedal, a device that repeats audio. Other songs needed a live band, leading him to introduce his friends. He brought out violinist Alicia Enstrom, whom he used to tour with. Enstrom brought her own friends as a backup band, learning his songs in three days. Sheeran shared with the crowd, “They said yes to being on stage with the knowledge that the world thought I was a certain type of person.”
The concert was different from his others. A man sitting next to me mentioned he’d seen Ed Sheeran seven different times, but this concert was Sheeran’s best. Sheeran also felt this way, telling the crowd this had been one of the worst weeks of his life, but the Philadelphia show had been the best of his life.
Freedom of speech isn’t something that can be infringed on. Macklemore didn’t deserve to be cut from the tour for sharing his opinion on matters close to his heart. Ed Sheeran should have had more of a backbone and fought for him to stay on tour, but where does his role as a singer end and political activist begin? If Macklemore’s entitled to show the world his beliefs, does Sheeran have the right to stay neutral for his shows? All I know is that I went to an Ed Sheeran concert as someone vocal about her political views. However, when I was sitting there, surrounded by all those people, the only thing I felt was love.