The Macklemore Mess: What Pink Got Right and Everyone Else Got Wrong
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Macklemore hasn't had a hit in a decade. Thanks to the backlash, he's now the most talked-about musician in the world. What should Jews have done instead?
What started as Macklemore’s hijacking of Ed Sheeran’s concert tour via a Free Palestine message has spiraled into international news, reigniting the Israel/Palestine debate, and almost canceling Ed Sheeran’s tour altogether. Patriots owner Robert Kraft tried to silence Macklemore. Ed Sheeran tried to remain silent. And Jewish singer/songwriter Pink inserted herself into the debacle commenting on social media via her Jewish experience.
But whose efforts helped the situation and whose made everything blow cataclysmically out of proportion? Most importantly what do we have to learn in this ever-increasing controversy that is as personal as it is political?
If you’re somehow not familiar with the events, here is a quick summary. At Ed Sheeran’s concerts on September 4th and 5th, rapper and master of poor fashion choices Macklemore delivered an extended political message about the war in Gaza, saying “Free Palestine,” playing his pro-Palestinian protest song “Hind’s Hall” while images of the destruction in Gaza played on a big screen. After the first night, Patriots owner Robert Kraft talked to Ed Sheeran, accused Macklemore of hate speech and insisted he not repeat the stunt. But on the subsequent night, Macklemore proved he wouldn’t be silenced.
Shortly after, Robert Kraft rallied other stadium owners leading to Macklemore being kicked off the tour. Macklemore accepted the ban, made another statement on social media announcing he was donating his salary for the tour of $1 million to Gaza charities and challenged Kraft to do the same. Kraft didn’t just meet the pledge he doubled it, saying the $2 million he ultimately pledged "to aid in the region" didn't come from Macklemore's dare at all, but from a private call in which Sheeran asked him to match Sheeran's own $2 million commitment.
Sheeran put out a statement saying it was not his decision to drop Macklemore but that he wouldn't abandon the tour. He insisted it was not a sign of being “complicit” and that there was suffering “on both sides.” This even but moderate response quickly led to Sheeran being in hot water. Opening acts of this tour as well as his touring band dropped out in solidarity with Macklemore, Sheeran became the focus of intense ridicule and criticism, and lost hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. He finally made another statement at his Philadelphia show condemning the suffering in Gaza (we’ll unpack that later). So what to make of it all?
Macklemore is going to be Macklemore. I think he cares more about looking noble than the suffering of Gaza. His qualifying statement about “To all my Jewish brothers and sisters” essentially said, as long as you don’t support Israel, you’re okay, so don’t call me antisemitic. And I think he used the popularity and publicity of someone else’s tour to elevate himself.
But this article isn’t about criticizing someone so self-righteous and opportunistic. It’s about how to react to the willfully ignorant statements they make.
Officially, the Messina Touring Group made the decision to pull Macklemore from the show. But the real pressure came from stadium owner Robert Kraft, and that's where the public blame has landed. A wealthy, visibly Jewish public figure organizing a boycott to silence someone speaking about the most popular political movement of the generation was about the stupidest thing anyone could have done.
Macklemore hasn't had a hit since the mid-2010s, but for the moment, he's the most talked-about musical artist in the world.
The war that followed October 7th has always been fought over public opinion as much as territory, and Hamas has won that fight at nearly every turn. In part by reviving the oldest conspiracy in the book, the idea that Jews secretly control governments and media. Kraft's organized boycott didn't invent that narrative, but it handed it something that looked, to a casual observer, like real evidence: a rich and powerful Jewish man personally deciding which artist gets to speak.
Macklemore hasn't had a hit since the mid-2010s, but for the moment, he's the most talked-about musical artist in the world.
Robert Kraft
Kraft could have used ownership of the literal platform to educate. As Jessica Tarlov said on the September 19th episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, “Bob Kraft could have made a public point of this and gotten some of the dialogue that we desperately need to have about the facts on the ground about what’s going on in Gaza and what Israel is doing… made it more of a teachable moment so we could at least be talking about it versus everyone going back to their [camps].”
We need more truthful information, nuance, and clarity. Not silence.
This controversy thrives on misinformation and disinformation. Why he isn’t using his considerable resources and literal platforms to give his follow Jews the education to stand up to the accusations of genocide and apartheid is beyond me. We need more truthful information, nuance, and clarity. Not silence.
Ed Sheeran tried not to choose a side. He should be able to hold a concert to appeal to everyone, and not force a political message down his audience’s throat if he doesn’t want to. But because of Macklemore, Sheeran found himself in the midst of an international litmus test.
He tried to say he wasn’t complicit, but in that space said nothing substantive or meaningful. I imagine he has some awareness of the Israel side of the story as he once met with former hostage and survivor of the Nova Festival, Noa Argamani. And though he claims he wants his art to be apolitical he has held concerts to raise charity for the Ukraine War. However that was his decision to make, not something he was forced into.
Saturday, September 19, he made a tearful statement at the opening of his Philadelphia show first saying that this was the “most complex political issue on the planet,” acknowledging the horrors of the October 7th Nova massacre, but the suffering in Gaza was “catastrophic and unjustifiable” and described the situation in the West Bank as “systemic injustice.” However, he stopped short of saying, “Free Palestine” or calling Gaza a “genocide.” Most reactions online were that it wasn’t good enough, and memes made its rounds on the internet that he was drying his tears with hundred-dollar bills.
What should he have done? Ultimately it was a lose/lose situation. Sheeran seems to want to offend as few people as possible, and when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. It would have been nice to have talked about meeting Noa Argamani and describe some of the nuance of the war. It would have shown some of the backbone he was criticized so much for lacking, but it would have ignited a storm he wasn’t ready to deal with. As least he didn’t capitulate to calling the war a genocide.
On September 6th, Pink shared a post from StopAntisemitism demanding an apology, refunds for concert attendees, and insisted the genocide was false as well as many other pro-Israel post on Instagram. She was met with considerable backlash, as to be expected. But then, on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah, she shared a very personal and thoughtful message. She acknowledged that she reacted strongly and the posts weren’t necessarily what she would have said herself. “... the comments came, and I did what I do when I’m hurt, which is post snarky memes and act like I’m fine. That’s on me. But I’d rather be disagreed with for what I actually said than hated for what anybody else wrote, so let me say it.”
From there she opens up in a very personal and intimate way, sharing her experience with her Judaism. She shares her honest feelings about the war and Hamas as well as her humanitarian efforts with Unicef. But then she shared what angered her most about Macklemore’s diatribe:
…he stood in front of a stadium full of music-loving families, with violent images from a war on the screens, dedicated a song to the movement of his choice, and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn’t about them. You don’t get to decide that for us…. What I need is to be able to say, as a Jewish mom, “that scared me, and it scared people I love,” without being told our fear is just propaganda, and without being told I’m somehow cool with genocide because I noticed?
These were, to me, the most important words of the whole controversy. Not an attack, just an honest account of how she felt. As much as the other side can reject, diminish, or try to turn it against you (and they have - Javier Bardem is backing a petition for Unicef to remove Pink as an ambassador), if the statement is honest and sensitive, their reactions don’t matter. What matters is that Pink’s words speak to the struggle Jews are having to face in every space that used to be safe. College campuses, coffee houses, hair salons, hotels, and concerts.
In a tense argument one of the best ways to dial it down is to use statements such as, “This is how this makes me feel.” It doesn’t condemn the other person; it shares your part in the conflict. It turns an enemy into a human.
This is the sincere expression Ed Sheeran never gave the public. Robert Kraft did eventually offer something close to it: "I would welcome the opportunity to sit down with Macklemore and discuss the facts, because ultimately our goal is the same — peace for all people, an end to suffering, and an end to all hate." But the offer came after he'd already organized the boycott, not before.
And it's a shame, because who came out on top on all of this? Not Pink. Not the children in Gaza. Not any Jew who doesn’t want to condemn Zionism or Israel.
Macklemore. With every single reaction, he became more and more popular. Like the Burger King employee who got fired for saying “Free Palestine” and got a mural on some wall in Gaza, Macklemore knows the more offensive he can be, the more notoriety he gets. And the more backlash Jews lob at him, the more he is honored.
But in that three-minute speech on Ed Sheeran’s tour, he didn’t have a shred of the honest authentic heart that Pink had in just one of the sentences of her Rosh Hashanah Eve post to Jews everywhere.
