In May 2014, a man disguised in an elaborate costume, wearing a thick black beard, a messy dark wig and a gargantuan prosthetic nose, ascended the stage for his surprise musical performance in Seattle.
Revellers at this concert were invited to “dress as your favourite music icon or video character.”
This performer opted for the stereotypical Jewish caricature look.
Called out for his insensitive wardrobe choices, he later apologised and acknowledged “how the costume could, within a context of stereotyping, be ascribed to a Jewish caricature,” adding “I love human beings, love originality and…happen to love a weird outfit from time to time.”
That man was Macklemore.
The American rapper is back in the headlines again, this time for remarks he made as the opening act for Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour in America.
Standing in front of around 80,000 Sheeran fans in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium and donning a Palestinian keffiyeh, he declared “Free Palestine,” adding “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. My message is for peace. Love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect and equality.”
Macklemore went on to say: “I say Free Palestine, I say Free Lebanon, I say Free Cuba, I say Free Congo, I say Free Sudan, free all people in America living in fear over this terrorist organisation ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. None of us will be free until we are all free.”
Whatever one thinks of ICE, equating a US federal immigration agency with authoritarian states and bloody dictatorships is an astonishing flattening of wildly different political realities.
Macklemore then proceeded to sing “Hind’s Hall,” his ode to the Columbia University students who occupied campus buildings in the spring of 2024; protests that, according to the university, included property damage and left Jewish and Israeli students feeling harassed and intimidated. Amid the protests, the students renamed the college’s Hamilton Hall to “Hind’s Hall” after Hind Rajab, the five-year-old girl killed in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war.
The song, Macklemore told the Sheeran fans at MetLife, “is inspired by the bravery of the Columbia University students who led an encampment movement that mobilised the entire world.”
The proceeds from that song, released in May 2024 with 5 million YouTube views to date, are being donated to UNRWA, Macklemore said, a UN agency accused of ties to Hamas.
Macklemore has every right to hold these views and sing about them. But why was Ed Sheeran’s stage transformed into a platform for such views?
I must confess that I am a big Ed Sheeran fan. His music regularly functions as an escape from the cacophony of politics, division, anger, hate and polarisation that regrettably consume so much of our daily lives.
I hum along to Ed Sheeran’s music when I write. I know the lyrics to all his soothing hits, from “Shape of You” to “Thinking Out Loud,” “Tenerife Sea” and “Give Me Love.”
Sheeran spent a month travelling through India in 2025, inspiring his single “Sapphire.” The song was created in collaboration with Indian musicians to celebrate the country’s wonderfully rich culture. There are even verses sung in a mix of Hindi and Punjabi.
That same year and to much fanfare, Sheeran released another single “Azizam,” meaning “My dear” in Persian and highlighting the beauty of Iran. It was co-written and co-produced with Iranian-Swedish songwriter Ilya Salmanzadeh and featured traditional instruments including a type of drum called the daf.
Those songs were extraordinary successes in making the world feel smaller and more interconnected.
The Macklemore appearance, unfortunately, does the opposite and distracts from and divides an already tense and fraught world.
Ed Sheeran doesn’t need Macklemore. He sells out stadiums everywhere he goes with his incredible music. Nor does he generally use his platform for inflammatory political statements. Which is why pairing him with a supporting act in Macklemore who turned his set into a political diatribe is hardly conducive to the Sheeran brand.
Some might say that artists have long used their enormous platforms – everyone from Billie Eilish, to Bono and Bob Dylan – to promulgate their beliefs and that concerts are in fact seldom neutral spaces. That’s fair, but there is a difference between an artist’s own convictions seeping through his or her own music and a guest performer using someone else’s massive audience to deliver a reductive, one-sided take on one of the most contested conflicts in the most turbulent region in the world.
Audiences paid for an Ed Sheeran masterclass, not for a lecture on the Middle East or an anti-Israel rally. There are plenty of those already and they are usually free.
One Iranian fan made precisely this point in an open letter to Ed Sheeran posted on X.
“For Iranian Jews,” he said, “whose families fled persecution and extremism to find peace and freedom, an arena full of music is meant to be a rare space of pure unity and joy…[but] your stage at MetLife was turned into a platform for division.”
I hope Sheeran is, in the words of his hit single, “Thinking Out Loud” about what his next show will look like.
Jonathan Harounoff is an award-winning British author and journalist covering the Middle East and Israel’s former international spokesperson at the United Nations. He is also the host of the new show “UNscripted with Jonathan Harounoff,” set to launch later this month
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