Ed Sheeran, Macklemore, and the cost of staying silent

Rich Mounds Saskatchewan, population 118. The kind of place where nothing much happens and folks like it that way. But all that changed when some strangers rolled into town. Cult Queen of Canada tells the wild story of what happens when a cult sets up shop in a sleepy community. The Six Part series from CBC Podcasts just won double gold at the signal awards. Cult Queen of Canada, listen now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. I'm Alamine Abdul-Mahmud and this is commotion and let's start here. Find something that you love and do it every day. Do that for the rest of your life. And eventually the world will change. I'll be patient, one more month. You'll wrap your fingers on my thumb. That is a bit of growing up. It's a song by Macklemore featuring Ed Sheeran. It's a beautiful little song about how becoming a father can change your life. It's a collaboration between two artists who have worked together for a long time, knowing each other for a long time. And you think when you make a song like this, nothing could come between you. Right? While this week they are the biggest story happening in pop culture right now. Jay Smooth is here. I'm sorry you're seeing this here. And Nico Stratus is here to unpack everything that's going on with the story. Hello to all of you. Hi, good morning. Hi, me. Hi, nice to see you. What's going on? Listen, bear with me while I just catch everybody up for just a moment. Because this story has had a lot of different moving pieces. And so it's worth catching everybody up on this. So on Monday, Macklemore has dropped him Ed Sheeran's North American tour. After a bunch of stadium owners said, you know what? We're not going to let Ed Sheeran play at the venues. If Macklemore remains as one of the tour's openers because of a bunch of statements that Macklemore made of a Palestine. And then the story got bigger, right? Like all of Ed Sheeran's opening acts. They all pulled out of the tour, his own backing band, Bioga Quit. We're going to get into all of that. I think it is worth maybe listening to Macklemore in his own words. So have a listen to this. One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart, free Palestine. I said free Palestine. Kalidra goes on to say, quote to all of my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being as genocide is in no way as a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. Jay, I'm going to start with you on this one. What was your reaction to hearing that Macklemore had been dropped for saying this? Yeah, I mean, I'm both surprised and not surprised. When you listen to that statement to me, it sounds like Macklemore going out of his way to make a measured statement that doesn't use what people might consider the most divisive language. So I feel like he was trying his best to meet the moment in a way they would work for everybody. Unfortunately, we've seen a long track record of pro-Palestinian expression being silenced and persecuted and it's not a big surprise that Robert Kraft would be at the forefront of doing something like that. He's been doing things like that for a while. I think my biggest surprise or confusion is wondering what Ed Sheeran thought was going to happen when he gave Macklemore this platform because he seems to be friends with Macklemore. He should know Macklemore has been outspoken on this issue for quite a long time. And it seems like Ed Sheeran was just really unprepared to meet the moment when ramifications came up for speaking on this issue. So I'm curious what was going on in his mind. You mentioned a name there, Robert Kraft. Robert Kraft is an American billionaire. He's the owner of the new New England Patriots. He owns the stadium where the play, which is Gillette Stadium. That is one of the venues that was supposed to be where Ed Sheeran was going to be playing. And so I'll get to Robert Kraft in just a moment. But Nico, I want to go to you because Jay's right. This is not the first time that we've seen artists drop from venues for over solidarity with Palestine. But this one feels a little bit different somehow. Nico, first of all, I think your video is a little bit frozen. But if you can hear me, what stood out for you about how this all went down? You know, the first thing that I saw was, hey, the headline of Macklemore drops out of Ed Sheeran tour. It's like, wait, what is happening? Like, just Macklemore and Ed Sheeran sharing a headline together was already like a little bit startling. And I think it kind of makes this like perfect headline fodder of like, oh, everybody has an opportunity to make a joke about Macklemore and Ed Sheeran. And it has all these things. And it's also so, you know, kind of like along the lines of what Jay was saying, it's so nakedly transparent that this is somebody being silenced for making. A measured statement for saying free Palestine on stage to then immediately be taken like off of this massive, you know, this big tour, this big money thing, like it is so obvious from the outset as to what is happening here. And I think for a lot of people, it is this sort of waking up moment of, oh, this has been happening in this whole time. And I just haven't been, I haven't seen it. And it's just so like, you know, it's on this huge stage. And suddenly somebody says free Palestine, and they're not invited back and it's like, wait, hold on, what's happening here? I think it's really worth sitting with the idea that like Macklemore saying free Palestine is not a new phenomenon. It's a thing that he's been doing literally four years on stage at this point. And so Jay's point about like, what did Ed Sheeran think was going to happen? Either before he had Macklemore come on the tour or after he kicked him off, that is a bit of a mystery. And I want to return to that. Sarah, maybe we can situate ourselves a little bit in who Robert Kraft is, right? Because he's been a pretty, he's been leading maybe, shall we say, the ban against Macklemore in venues. He's told Rolling Stone that he specifically said about his venue, but there's some sort of reporting about the idea that these venues have been in contact with one another. So far, Macklemore is banned from seven stadiums in the US. For those who might not be familiar with Robert Kraft, who is Robert Kraft? Yeah, it's a great thing to discuss at this point. I mean, I think that, you know, as we all know, he is the billionaire owner of this venue, right? But I think that there's a little more there, right? Like this is someone who has a really proven track record of giving money to APAC and very vocally supporting Israel. You know, despite the fact that he says that, you know, he's supporting both sides, you know, I don't know what supporting both sides looks like when Netanyahu is calling you the most loyal friend to Israel, right? So, I think that, you know, like a lot of other, you know, we've seen a lot of, if you've been paying attention since the start of the genocide out like, you know, who has been sort of responsible for some of these, you know, different. You know, cancellation campaigns basically against, you know, whether it's a celebrity or, you know, if it's Mark Ruffalo or if it's like students at Columbia, you know, there are these like sort of billionaires in the mix or very powerful connected people who have been part of, you know, pushing for censorship and silence. I think what's interesting in this case is that Robert Kraft is like responding to everything. And I think that's the thing that feels different to me. Robert Kraft is not somebody who normally sort of outspoken and giving give statements. He chose to speak about this one. Also, we should note that like Robert Kraft and Ed Sheeran are friends Ed Sheeran performed at Robert Kraft's wedding, which is like maybe a helpful context sort of understand all of this. Well, it does sound a little bit like we're playing madlibs when you say that out loud. Jay in his statement, Robert Kraft said that he based his decision on what Macklemore said at the concert, what he claims is quote a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community. And then he goes on to talk about the actions of Hamas, a terrorist organization and claims he's helped Palestinian groups and fought against anti-Semitism. What he's referring to there is this image from 2014 where Macklemore performed and he was wearing a sort of like a gigantic kind of mask. He had a wig on with dark hair. He had a large nose on his face and he got a lot of criticism for what appeared to be a Jewish caricature. He's since apologized for that particular moment. But what do you make of what Robert Kraft is doing sort of connecting that like what's happening now to that moment? Yeah, it's interesting that he frames it as a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery because the evidence that we have at hand it doesn't really show a broader history. There is this one incident that you refer to which was legitimately problematic. It was this sort of a costume themed event in Seattle where Macklemore put on a costume to sort of hide before his surprise appearance. And the costume, although he claims he didn't realize this, if you're familiar with anti-Semitic tropes, it definitely looked like a pretty weird caricature of an Orthodox Jewish man or sort of like that anti-Semitic greedy merchant meme that you'll see online. And I was one of the critics at the time that was quoted in the news coverage, calling him out for what was initially kind of a flippant response about it before he took in more feedback and gave him more full-throated apology. And I think it's worth noting at the time that ADL, I can read. their court here. They said, "We welcome Maclamore's apology for wearing a costume that, regardless of his motives, reminded many people of an anti-Semitic caricature. We take him at his word. He didn't have any ill intent and unreservantly accept his apology." I think that was a pretty widespread opinion at the time. There hasn't been any other instance since then that I'm aware of of Maclamore saying anything anti-Semitic. That's not to say that especially people who are seeing that picture for the first time don't have a right to be offended by it. But when Robert Kraft lumps that in with what he calls a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric, looking at the evidence, I can only think that he is playing that same old disingenuous game of conflating critique of the state of Israel with anti-Semitic rhetoric. So after that accusation of anti-Semitism, you're right to point out, I don't think I've seen other accusations of anti-Semitism against Maclamore, but people have brought up that image quite frequently. And rightfully so, I think that image was very jarring when you first saw it. And I appreciate you saying, "You know what, you were back in the Twitter trenches when I'm like, "Hey, Maclamore, what is going on here?" Because back in 2014, you could do that kind of thing. Nico Ed Sheeran has come out with a statement of his own. I feel like right now we're doing the parsing of the statements, which is significant to do. So this is what Ed Sheeran said. Ed Sheeran said, "I'm appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the suffering and pain caused on both sides as a tragedy." He then later goes on to say, "There's a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics. My audience includes young people, often children of all backgrounds, those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum." Nico, what do you make of that statement? Other than it just being like outwardly cowardly. Okay. You know, it feels very, I'm saying and does a joke, but I do, I legitimately think that it's a coward's statement. It is this neutrality. You know, Ed Sheeran is this kind of nothing person, right? He is a nice soft white boy that wants his shows to be a public forum where kids can be safe as if kids aren't political, as if kids learning about the world somehow makes them unsafe. I think it's really important to talk about the fact that he says that he's culturally Irish, his dad is from Belfast, and a lot of the people that his opening band and other members of the people that have pulled off this tour are themselves Irish, and part of it is that they have this solidarity with Palestine. A lot of these Irish artists from very specific cultural reasons. And so, like, I think him making this statement that says, you know, paying cause on both sides and all of this is just him choosing to stand in the face of oppression and say, "What if I do nothing because I want everybody to be happy, especially money?" And it just, it feels at the end of the day, howardly to not do something or say something, and I think that this will ultimately harm this brand that he has of like the nice boy next door that got a bunch terrible looking tattoos and made it good. Okay, first of all, I do want to say that like, when I read his statement out loud, I think there may have been a tone in my voice, and that tone in my voice is because I'm not actually entirely convinced that Ed Sheeran himself is a political. I think this is an artist who, number one, he's endorsed labor MPs in the UK. He has just earlier this year, he put out a song with you two supporting Ukraine. There's a, I think like, I've seen a picture of him wearing a Justice for Grenfell, which is like after the awful fires in the UK. So, like, he has at times allowed himself to get a little bit political. So, Nico Ed Sheeran's statement touches on this question of who gets to be a political, and what topic gets to remain relatively a political, even though it's kind of explicitly politics. Like, can you talk a little bit about what's automatically considered political and what's not? Yeah, I mean, it's so funny, because when we talk about being political, it is often sort of framed as like being political as a sound bite, as a thing that people can consume, right? It is a little thing on the news. It is a, it's a PR statement that you put out or whatever, when like, everybody is political, and even Ed Sheeran is choosing right now to be political. He just doesn't see it that way. You know, being political is a series of actions that you take that you, you know, you put your life in your body and your work towards, you work towards something, you're willing to lose something for it. You know, you have these personal set of beliefs. Everybody is political. All of us on this call live lives that are political. I'm a trans woman in North America in 2026. You know, we all are politicized in our own way. So, we are not afforded if we ever speak up in our own defense or in defense of others. We're instantly activists and we're political. But Ed Sheeran is acting in the name of, you know, power of capital, of blood of all of these things. So, he is making a political action. He just wants to frame it as being neutral because he wants to maintain this grasp on, you know, power and money and, you know, the spotlight and all of these things. So, it is this interesting idea. I've seen this apolitical thing going around about this, and I actually think what he's doing is very political. It's just political in a way we don't see as political because we don't like to see people that side with oppressors or that stand neutral in the face of oppressors and say that, oh, well, that person's being political because they've said nothing. That is an inherently political act. He just doesn't want it to be political because it ruins the brand of this. My shows are a public forum and people don't want to talk about politics. I think they do. You can hear the reaction. When Accomor says free Palestine and the audience erupts, that audience wants to talk about politics. They want to engage with the political world. They want to acknowledge that these things are real, that, you know, that this genocide has been ongoing for years. They want to chant free Palestine back and they want to feel safe doing so. And to not meet that moment, I think, is ultimately just cowardly. Sorry. I want to go back to the thing that Nico mentioned a moment ago, which is that as we've seen all of these backing bands, opening bands and cheering's own backing band, I sort of quit the tour. I'm reminded, right, of like the relationship between Irish people and the Palestinian cause. I think like there's, there's, was there any surprise for you at all that having artists like Aaron Rowe and a band like Boyega, having artists who are, in fact, Irish, ending up dropping out of the tour. Was that a surprise to you at all as a reaction to this moment? No, not at all. I mean, I think that there's been a pretty rich, you know, kind of connection between the Irish and Palestinian peoples. Like, I think that there's always been like a kind of this solidarity. And I think that you've probably seen a lot of Irish artists. You know, for example, you have Sally Rooney, very vocal on Palestine. And I think specifically when it comes to, you know, there is this, you know, groundswell of musicians who are campaigning to boycott Israel. And I think that a lot of Irish, a lot of Irish artists are part of those, those efforts. I, yeah, when I think about the other artists we've dropped out, you know, like Phineas dropped out, Phineas, of course, being incredibly famous for being Billy Alley's his brother, but also an excellent musician in his own right. Lucas Graham, a Danish band, they had that hit seven years, which was a hit, I think I want to say like maybe 11 years ago. And I think like, there is a cost, Jay, right? Like, there's a cost. If you are an opening musician, who could use the publicity, who could use the boost of playing, you know, 20 shows, 30 shows to soul that stadium that that cheer and is one of the biggest band, one of the biggest touring acts right now. So if you want to talk a little bit about the cost, it would take, right? If you are a band or if you're an artist who is opening for a cheer and how significant to sacrifice is it to say, I don't think I can go on this tour. Yeah, I think it's really heartening to see it, you know, not entirely surprising, as Sarah said, you know, that these Irish acts have a certain perspective on things that would make them more likely to take this stand, but I think it's important to see because for a long time, this has been a really effective way of establishing a chilling effect on this type of activism and speaking out this way, because especially for a smaller artist like most of these opening acts in the backing band are, for every Robert Kraft who explicitly says, I am shutting this down because of what you said, there will be 10 more times that you just don't get a call back, you don't get an opportunity, and you never hear why, but chances are it was because that door was closed because you were outspoken. And I think it's, it's important to see how quickly almost everyone associated took that stand, because just a couple of years ago, we saw Melissa Barrera get kicked off of scream for speaking out for Palestine, and we didn't really see her peers show solidarity with her or with Palestine. We saw one of them recently Matthew Lillard speak out just this month about how much she regrets not standing with Melissa Barrera at the time, but I think it, I think it's important to see just across the board, people not cow-towing and people resisting that attempt to silence this advocacy, because you know, the more that we set that example, the more that the narrative for the public watching at home is, well, if you need to work this hard to silence them, that doesn't indicate that you think the truth is on your side, and the more we can illustrate that by pushing back against it, I think it's important. I should note, as we speak right now, Nico, I think my curiosity is what happens with this Ed Sheeran tour, because he has not canceled the tour as of this recording we're talking right now on Thursday morning. He has not canceled the next, the next shows or any of the, any of the rest of the tour. His next show is scheduled to be in Philadelphia on Saturday night. Ed Sheeran is an artist who has, in fact, gone on tour and just him and his little loop pedal, a guitar loop pedal, and filled out a whole stadium. He has been his own backing band. He's actually has more than a lot of other artists, a lot of experience doing that. Is that what that show going to look like, you think? Or do you imagine that, you know, between our conversation now, and Saturday, something might kind of radically shift. I am really curious to see what happens with that. You're right. It could just as easily be him alone up there on stage. It could be, look, I'm sure there's any number of people who are willing to throw their scruples and horals to the wind in order to jump on this tour right now, which would be a really hard move for anybody unless they're already like, quote, unquote, canceled for whatever reason. So I'll be very curious to see what happens going forward. One thing that I do hope is that, like, and I've seen a lot of other people talking about this as well is like, you know, the, and Macklemore has said this in his statements of the conversation should actually be on Palestine, it shouldn't really be on Macklemore, it shouldn't really be on Ed Sheeran, it should be on Palestine, like we have an opportunity to do that. So like, while we're thinking about what happens going forward for Ed Sheeran, I also think like, what go what happens going forward for these public statements of solidarity with Palestine, with people that have been silenced as Jay was saying, and, you know, like, we didn't let kneecap into the country because of this. So you know, like, what? I can't, I can't, I literally did not let the band kneecap into the country because, yeah, because of exactly this. Yes. The Irish band kneecap. Yeah. I'm sorry. I should have, I should have clarified. But, you know, Ed Sheeran will be fine. He's a, he's a cisgender heterosexual white man and, you know, in the world, he will be just fine. Zero consequences. I'm sure. But I am curious as, like, what changes around all of those? Hey, it's Danielle and Cali, your host of in three, Canada's number one entertainment news podcast. We spent more time with Taylor Swift than most other people were media pros. We hosted the Verity screening besties, how we has become the hottest Baxter boy said no one, but you ever, ever, and insiders who have seen it all, I R L Oscars golden gloves. You name it. We have been there with access to the biggest talent. Welcome to in three Patrick J. Adam, the fun starts in three. You know who's not going to survive this? Dad talk. New episodes, Mondays and Thursdays. I will say that here's something I've been thinking about a lot, Sarah, as I sort of, maybe this is the place for us to land this conversation is about a year ago. I think it was September of 2025, you know, Jerry Seinfeld said that the words free Palestine, saying the words free Palestine was akin to being a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. Like, that was a comparison that he made. He compared saying free Palestine to like literal actual hate speech. And we cut to a year later, right, we hear we are now, and Macklemore said free Palestine Ed Sheeran drops him from the tour and the person who gets the blowback, in fact, is Ed Sheeran, you know, the internet has kind of really come for Ed Sheeran at this moment. You're the editor-in-chief of the key, which is a publication from the Palestine Festival Literature. You've been reporting on Palestine for years. When you look at this moment and how the story is playing out, what is the significance of this moment, do you think? I mean, I feel really mixed, right, because if you really zoom out and you think about it, the controversy that we're litigating is whether or not it's okay to say that Palestinians should not be slaughtered by the thousands, right? So we, as a culture, we are having these big public arguments about, is it okay to say that mass murder and an illumination campaign against a group of people that it's okay to say something about that, right, which has its own absurdity, particularly when the US, which is where I am, I'm sorry for any, any anti-Canadian rhetoric, I'm backwards, ever. I think my track record is fine. But here in the US, just as this news broke, Trump approved $2.8 billion for a weapons deal for Israel, right? So we are not only giving the green light on this, and by the way, this is one of the bipartisan issues, Democrats and Republicans, obviously that's changing a lot amongst, I mean, both Republicans and Democrats in actuality, but like, there has always been the sort of status quo on the issue of Palestine. So I think on the one hand, it's very fascinating to see sort of this big kind of like, it feels like a huge tideshift, right? Like it feels like there is this sort of big thing that's happening, but you know, we need to put that in perspective for the last few years. You know, you have protesters shutting down London and other big cities and other places in the world. You have people who've been jailed and have been, you know, rounded up and prosecuted for speaking out on Palestine and for protesting. And I think what I worry about is that we're going to keep getting stuck on this, we're stopping at free Palestine and then we're not going beyond that. We're not having discussions about, well, what does it mean when foreign aid by the billions is being used to murder civilians? When that, in fact, we have in the U.S., we have laws that are meant to be enforced to make sure that U.S. money is not being used to do that. Obviously, we know that those laws are not really enforced. So are there very rarely enforced? So I think that on the one hand, I think that it's great that like the people are engaging with this. Yeah. People are engaging, but then how many Palestinians are going to be left by the time that we're ready to talk about what you actually do to solve the situation? And that's the thing that haunts me, to be honest. I think that's a powerful place to leave it. I really appreciate all your insights, and I'm going to sit with that for a moment. But I also appreciate all of you coming on the show today. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having us. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. This show is called Comotion. We will be back tomorrow. We'll see you then. Have a good day. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.