Ed Sheeran has continued his controversial Loop Tour with a new backing band after Irish folk group Beoga withdrew in solidarity with Macklemore, along with the rest of his opening acts.
Rapper Macklemore was forcibly removed from the tour by promoter Messina Touring Group after voicing support for Palestine onstage, following calls led by billionaire businessman and stadium owner, Robert Kraft. Sheeran and his team allegedly failed to stand up to Kraft and the stadium owners he rallied.
Now, Sheeran has stepped on stage for the first time since the controversy and opened his solo concert in Philadelphia on September 19 by addressing what ensued over the past couple of weeks.
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“I’ve had to take, and make, difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I’m so, so sorry for them,” Sheeran said.
“I don’t want to disappoint fans, and I’ve never wanted to be an activist musician, but this has put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet.”
He described “what happened in Israel and at the Nova music festival on October 7 [2023]” as “horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain”.
“What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate,” Sheeran continued. “My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians’ lives, children’s lives.”
He also stated he is “deeply worried” by the idea that performers and their content need to be “pre-approved” by venues and their owners.
“Everyone is telling me to cancel, and I’m feeling all of my friends and family and people I know abandon me, and I look at the end of the week, and I see 50,000 people who haven’t abandoned [me]. The world is a scary place right now. America is a scary place right now. This gives hope.”
Sheeran is keeping the show going by replacing Beoga, the band that used to join him for several songs each night, with other musicians. The new band includes close collaborator Alicia Enstrom, a violinist, composer, producer, and multidisciplinary performer.
“There are certain songs that just don’t work on the loop pedal,” he said. “So, when my friends dropped off this show, I was thinking, ‘How am I going to keep the show the same? And ‘How am I going to get musicians to stand on stage with me in a week where no-one wants to stand on stage with me?’”
Sheeran continued, “I rung up a friend of mine; she’s a superb human, and I toured with her all of last year [on my Mathematics Tour] and the one the year before that. I said to her, ‘Would you stand on stage with me?’ And she said, yes. I asked her if she knew some musician friends, and she said yes, and they’ve had three days to learn these songs.”
The British superstar introduced the rest of the band as simply, “Mike on drums, CJ on keys, Eric on bass, Clay on guitar.” Their surnames haven’t been revealed to the public.
“I just want to say before they come onstage, they said yes to being onstage with the knowledge that the world thought I was a certain type of person,” he asserted.
“They said yes with the knowledge that the world may hate them too for standing on stage with me, and I am so grateful for them being here tonight and standing on stage with me in front of you guys.”
Sheeran hasn’t confirmed whether this new group of musicians will join him for the rest of his dates. The tour continues on September 25 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
