Ed Sheeran has found himself in the most damaging moment of his career. But for the safest man in music, a controversy like this was possibly always waiting to happen. If your stock in trade is pleasant balladry, and you’re reluctant to give much of yourself away both personally and politically, the arrival of a controversy is far more dangerous than it otherwise would be. You can’t really quell your critics with a shiny distraction when your wares are designed to be as unassuming as possible.
Sheeran’s insistent apoliticism hit a wall this week, after the rapper Macklemore was dumped as an opening act for his US tour after voicing pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli government sentiment on his stage. Macklemore claimed that a troupe of concert-venue owners had threatened to pull the rest of Sheeran’s tour dates unless he was binned. One of those owners, the 85-year-old billionaire Robert Kraft, claimed in a statement that Macklemore had voiced “hate speech” on stage. Sheeran, meanwhile, denied being “complicit” in Macklemore’s removal but said that he doesn’t want politics at his shows, and confirmed that he had acquiesced to venue owners in order to not let down his fans and to ensure the continued employment of his other support acts – who, awkwardly, departed the tour out of solidarity with Macklemore a few hours later.
