Jack Antonoff has some choice words for Ed Sheeran over the way the pop star handled the controversy surrounding Macklemore’s Free Palestine comments during Sheeran’s Loop Tour, criticizing Sheeran for placating billionaires and saying that Sheeran needed to “stand the fuck up.”
It’s not in any way a strange, uncomfortable or controversial thing to say, it’s a deeply human thing to say,” Antonoff, who has given pro-Palestinian statements during his performances, told The Guardian in an interview published Sunday. “They’re going to let some fucking promoter tell me what I can say? Don’t book me. I’ll play for free outside. [Ed Sheeran] missed a massive, beautiful opportunity there: just cancel the whole fucking tour, then play for free outside each venue, raise a bunch of money, rather than let a fucking billionaire tell you what to do. The reason it’s not an anomaly or niche issue is because we all live in a world where billionaires are constantly telling us what to do. So stand the fuck up.”
Antonoff’s statement comes just over a month after Sheeran faced widespread criticism over Macklemore’s removal from his tour after Patriots owner Robert Kraft and several other NFL team owners had threatened to bar Sheeran’s performances if Macklemore was on the bill.
Hours after his removal, Macklemore said that Sheeran’s “typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before,” further adding that Sheeran “couldn’t get past his public facing, ‘I don’t take sides.’”
Sheeran’s tour openers Finneas, Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe left the tour in solidarity for Macklemore, while Sheeran addressed the controversy during a concert in Philadelphia, stating that “what happened in Israel and at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.”
Macklemore, for his part, has further doubled down on his pro-Palestine message, announcing the Free Palestine tour last month. The first show on that trek starts in Dublin tonight, and the final show will take place in London on Oct. 30.
Outside of the Sheeran controversy, Antonoff, who has been a vocal critic of live music giant Live Nation, continued to critique the company in his latest interview, saying that Live Nation “keep missing the point, because every time I say something, they’ll call my people and say: “Let’s have a meeting.’
“You don’t get it, I don’t want to fucking talk to you people, I want to make it clear that I’m not fucking OK with you turning the most sacred thing into the world into some weird free-market piece of shit,” Antonoff said. “The idea that if you’re rich, any ticket you want is yours at any time and if you’re not, you have to go through this demoralizing online experience where you get whacked and kicked and fucked around.”
