Support acts are pulling out of Ed Sheeran’s tour over Macklemore Palestine controversy

Finneas, Lukas Graham, Beoga and Aaron Rowe are all among the support acts and musicians pulling out of Ed Sheeran‘s tour in protest of Macklemore being kicked off for sharing his support of Palestine on stage. After making an impassioned speech calling for “all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality” while opening for Sheeran across recent dates in New Jersey, the rapper faced calls for his removal from the tour by the Israeli-American Council, who claimed he had used his platform to “advance a one-sided political agenda”. He then responded to critics of his onstage pleas for a “Free Palestine”, saying striving for equality “should never be controversial”, but still he was removed from the tour. Macklemore shared a lengthy statement in which he claimed that after Robert Kraft — the owner of the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium — started a campaign against Sheeran to drop him or the shows couldn’t go ahead. Kraft also spoke out to defend his actions, before Sheeran claimed that he was “not complicit” or responsible for the decision, adding that he had spent the past week “trying to build bridges, to find a solution” but was “unable to do so”. Now, a...