Pink Fuels Push to Drop Macklemore From Tour
Pink Fuels Push to Drop Macklemore From Tour
The News
Pink has amplified the campaign to remove Macklemore from Ed Sheeran's U.S. tour, resharing an Instagram Story from the advocacy group StopAntisemitism that attacked the rapper's "Free Palestine" speech at MetLife Stadium.
Pink added no comment of her own to the repost, TMZ reported, and has not explained it publicly.
Macklemore, who opened Sheeran's Sept. 4 and Sept. 5 shows in New Jersey, told the crowd he joined the Loop Tour specifically to say "Free Palestine" from American stadium stages — and called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a "terrorist organization."
He is not backing down. "Wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial," he wrote on Instagram.
Timeline
Macklemore releases "Hind's Hall," a protest song backing pro-Palestinian campus encampments and criticizing U.S. support for Israel. Billboard reported he pledged all streaming proceeds to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. The title refers to Columbia University students renaming Hamilton Hall for Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza.
Opening for Sheeran at MetLife Stadium, Macklemore says "a big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine." He performs "Hind's Hall" as Gaza-related imagery plays on the stadium screens, and ends by naming "all the people in America who have to live in fear because of this terrorist organization ICE."
On night two, he answers the backlash from the stage: "To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters; criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide, in no way is a criticism of you."
The Israeli-American Council launches a petition demanding Sheeran's team drop Macklemore from the remaining dates.
Pink reposts StopAntisemitism's criticism, which called the performance "awful," accused Macklemore of "anti-Israel propaganda," and said Jewish concertgoers are "owed apologies" and refunds.
Macklemore posts video of the remarks with his own caption defending them.
Reactions
The Israeli-American Council, which says it represents more than 150,000 Israeli Americans, framed the fight as one about the venue, not the opinion: "This was an Ed Sheeran concert – not a political rally, not a protest, and not an activist event. The issue is not whether Macklemore has the right to hold political views. The question is where the line should be drawn when an opening act uses a global concert platform to advance a one-sided political agenda."
The group also wants Sheeran's tour leadership to say whether the speech, the visuals and the "Hind's Hall" performance were approved in advance, and to set "clear boundaries" for political content on the tour.
Macklemore's defense is that the target is a government, not a people. "My message is for peace, love, for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect and equality," he said onstage.
Sheeran has not publicly responded to the petition or the controversy, and Macklemore remains on the lineup, according to Newsweek, which said it had asked both artists' teams for comment.
What's Next
The tour resumes Sept. 19 in Philadelphia. Macklemore is scheduled to open eight U.S. stadium shows between mid-September and early November, per Sheeran's website as cited by Billboard.
The petition is aimed at Sheeran, MetLife Stadium leadership and Live Nation. Two questions are still open: whether Sheeran's management signed off on the speech and the Gaza imagery beforehand, and whether anyone in the tour's chain of command acts before the Philadelphia date.
More
This is not Macklemore's first collision with a promoter over the war. In 2024 he was dropped as a Las Vegas festival headliner days after an "F*** America" chant at a Palestine fundraiser event, as TMZ reported at the time; the right-leaning Post Millennial cited that same appearance in its coverage of the current petition drive.
The Wider Fight
The clash lands inside a broader argument in American culture over where criticism of Israel ends and antisemitism begins — the same argument that produced an open letter from Jewish artists, including Joel Coen and Tony Kushner, against what they called the "dangerous weaponization" of antisemitism, per Deadline.
Macklemore's ICE line also pulls the fight onto domestic ground, tying the Gaza protest movement to the immigration enforcement debate now running through the midterm campaign.
Poll
Should an opening act use another artist's tour to make a political statement?
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