Jack Antonoff has some choice words for Ed Sheeran about how the pop star handled the controversy surrounding Macklemore’s Free Palestine comments during Sheeran’s Loop tour, criticizing Sheeran for appeasing billionaires and saying Sheeran needs to “stand up.”
This is in no way a strange, uncomfortable or controversial thing to say, it’s a deeply human thing to say,” said Antonoff, who has made pro-Palestinian statements during his performances. The Guardian in an interview published on Sunday. “They’re going to let a fucking promoter tell me what I can say? Don’t hire me. I’ll play outside for free. (Ed Sheeran) missed a huge, great opportunity there: just cancel the whole fucking tour, then play outside of every venue for free, raise a lot of money, rather than let a fucking billionaire tell you what to do. The reason this isn’t an anomaly or a niche problem is because we all live in a world where billionaires are constantly telling us what to do.
Antonoff’s statement comes just over a month after Sheeran faced widespread criticism over Macklemore’s withdrawal from his tour after Patriots owner Robert Kraft and several other NFL team owners threatened to ban Sheeran’s performances if Macklemore was on the bill.
Hours after his dismissal, Macklemore said Sheeran’s “typical apolitical stance was being challenged like it never was before,” further adding that Sheeran “couldn’t ignore his public ‘I’m not taking sides’ attitude.”
Sheeran’s first tour guests, Finneas, Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe, left the tour in solidarity with Macklemore, while Sheeran addressed the controversy at a concert in Philadelphia, stating that “what happened in Israel and at the Nova Music Festival on October 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic, unjustifiable and disproportionate.”
Macklemore, for his part, further doubled down on his pro-Palestinian message, announcing the Free Palestine tour last month. The first show of this tour starts in Dublin this evening and the final show will be in London on October 30.
Outside of the Sheeran controversy, Antonoff, who has been an outspoken critic of live music giant Live Nation, continued to criticize the company in his latest interview, saying that Live Nation “continues to miss the point, because every time I say something, they call my people and say, ‘Let’s have a meeting.’
“You don’t understand, I don’t want to talk to you, I want to be clear, I don’t agree with you turning the most sacred thing in the world into some weird free market piece of shit,” Antonoff said. “The idea that if you’re rich, all the tickets you want are yours at all times and if you’re not, you have to go through this demoralizing online experience where you get beaten up and kicked and fucked.”
Gn entert
