ED Sheeran has broken down in tears onstage as he bowed to pressure and apologised over a Palestine row.
The singer broke his silence onstage last night after Macklemore was pulled from his tour and his own band quit in protest.
Protesters mounted a demo outside his Philadelphia gig at the Lincoln Financial Field.
Sheeran said he had questioned whether he “wanted to be an artist at all” after the huge row.
The singer-songwriter said onstage last night: “I’ve had to take, and make, difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes and I’m so, so sorry for them.
“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 said he had tried not to be a “political commentator” because he wanted his music to be about “unity”.
But after days of increased pressure threatening the future of his US tour Loop, the singer admitted onstage: “I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore.”
“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 and unjustifiable and disproportionate.
“My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians’ lives, children’s lives.
“And the systemic injustice we are seeing unfold in the West Bank cannot be overlooked.”
The controversy started when US rapper Macklemore was banned by Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft from performing at the venue at a gig planned for later this month.
Kraft said he would not “provide a platform for hate speech” after the rapper spoke out about Palestine onstage.
Getting cancelled for literally saying nothing
BY Jeremy Clarkson
IT’S always difficult to predict who’s going to get cancelled next.
No one saw JK Rowling coming, that’s for sure.
A penniless author writes a series of books that children adore and then, one day, she casually mentions that men shouldn’t be allowed to use women’s lavatories.
And that was that.
We were all instructed by a braying mob to burn her books — and even the actors and actresses she’d propelled to fame in the Harry Potter films were quick to denounce her.
She was done. Finished. Cancelled.
So who would be next? Moira Stuart? Judi Dench? Nicholas Lyndhurst?
Nope. It turned out to be Ed Sheeran.
He literally said nothing at all and, for that, his fans are trying to offload tickets for his forthcoming tour, his support acts have all walked and, from what I hear, even his band is refusing to play with him.
They want him to sound off on Palestine, and because he’s not really that sort of person, the keyboard warriors have sent him to Coventry.
It’s bullying. There’s no other word for it.
But when Macklemore was pulled from the tour, several other support acts quit in solidarity – including Sheeran’s own band.
Other acts who dropped out included Grammy award-winning musician Finneas, Irish singer Aaron Rowe and Danish singer Lukas Graham.
Thousands then cancelled tickets and the musician was unsure if he’d be able to carry on with performances at all.
Emotional Sheeran last night thanked fans for still coming out to his gig, saying: “This concert is still a place where everyone is welcome and everyone here can stand beside people that have opposing views, and everyone can stand beside people that they don’t agree with on everything, but they can all agree on singing these songs.”
He ended the gig by saying: “The world is a scary place right now. America is a scary place right now. This gives hope.”
After losing his warm-up acts, Sheeran’s concert start time was pushed back from 5.30pm local time to 8pm.
The tour began in Auckland, New Zealand, in January and is set to finish in Mexico City in December after 16 more dates across America.