This article was originally published on Crafting Your Home. A human contributor also wrote and edited the post.
The post Ed Sheeran Left Without a Single Opening Act as His Entire Loop Tour Lineup Walks Out in One Chaotic Day first appeared on Crafting Your Home
Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour hit a stunning roadblock this week when every remaining opening act and his own touring band announced they were quitting the tour within hours of one another.
What began as the removal of rapper Macklemore from Sheeran’s upcoming U.S. dates quickly snowballed into a mass exit, with Grammy winner Finneas, Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe, Danish pop act Lukas Graham, and Sheeran’s longtime backing band Beoga all announcing on Tuesday, September 15, that they would no longer be part of the tour.
By the end of the day, Sheeran had gone from headlining one of the year’s biggest stadium tours with a full supporting lineup to facing his remaining U.S. shows with no opening acts and no band behind him.
The dominoes began falling after Macklemore was removed from the remaining stops of Sheeran’s Loop Tour following pro-Palestinian remarks he made onstage during Sheeran’s shows at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey earlier this month.
Messina Touring Group, the promoter behind the U.S. leg of the tour, told Rolling Stone that multiple venues said they would not allow the concerts to proceed if Macklemore remained on the bill.
Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, was scheduled to appear at eight of Sheeran’s ten remaining U.S. shows before his removal was announced earlier this week.
How Macklemore’s Removal Sparked a Mass Walkout
The situation escalated further when Macklemore publicly alleged that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft had pressured venues to drop him from the tour, claiming Kraft threatened to cancel Sheeran’s scheduled stop at Gillette Stadium if Macklemore remained involved and that Kraft had rallied other stadium owners to issue similar ultimatums.
Kraft later confirmed that he did not want Macklemore performing at Gillette Stadium but did not directly address the claim that he had pressured other venue owners as well.
In the days that followed, Macklemore received public messages of support from a range of figures, including television personality Ms. Rachel, model Bella Hadid, Representatives Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal, Dearborn, Michigan, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, and fellow musicians including Kehlani and Zara Larsson.
Amid the growing controversy, Aaron Rowe, one of the artists brought in to help fill Macklemore’s remaining tour dates, became the first to announce he would not go on without him. In a statement posted to Instagram, the Irish singer-songwriter explained his reasoning while making clear the decision did not come easily.
“I don’t take this decision lightly,” Rowe wrote, describing his personal history with Sheeran as a friendship that changed his career.
He then connected his choice to his own background, stating that he could not, in his words, “stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power” to influence which voices get heard on a public stage, framing his exit as a matter of personal conscience rather than a dispute with Sheeran himself.
Ed Sheeran Breaks His Silence: ‘I Am Not Complicit’
Hours after Rowe’s announcement, Sheeran addressed the controversy directly for the first time in a lengthy statement shared on Instagram.
The 35-year-old singer made clear that the decision to remove Macklemore was not his, explaining that he spent the preceding week in direct conversations with venues, including Kraft, to find a resolution.
“I spoke with venues at length all week to try and build a bridge,” Sheeran wrote, adding that despite those efforts, the final call ultimately rested with the promoter and the venues involved, not him.
Sheeran went on to stress that he holds personal views on the broader conflict but has deliberately avoided using his concerts as a platform for political statements, citing the diversity of his audience, which he noted includes many young fans.
He wrote plainly, “I am not complicit,” and added that staying publicly silent on the issue did not mean he was indifferent, explaining that it “doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
Sheeran also defended his original decision to bring Macklemore on the tour, noting that he had personally invited him to join and adding that he respects him as an artist.
He closed by explaining why he chose to continue the tour without Macklemore rather than cancel outright, saying he would never let down the fans who had made plans to attend his remaining shows.
One by One, Sheeran’s Opening Acts and Band Walk Away
Sheeran’s statement did little to stop the momentum building against the tour, and within hours, Finneas, best known as Billie Eilish’s brother and longtime musical collaborator, announced his own exit from the tour’s South American leg.
Posting to Instagram, Finneas kept his statement brief but pointed, writing that he believed “artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed” before confirming his decision to withdraw entirely.
Danish pop act Lukas Graham, also brought in as one of Macklemore’s replacements on the remaining U.S. dates, announced a similar departure from the tour around the same time.
The biggest blow to the tour’s remaining shows came when Beoga, the Irish traditional band that has served as Sheeran’s live backing group for part of every Loop Tour set, confirmed it, too, was stepping away.
In a statement posted to Instagram, the band explained, “We have made the decision to depart as Ed Sheeran’s band” for the remainder of the U.S. leg, directly tying their exit to how Macklemore’s removal had unfolded.
Beoga went further in another part of their statement, grounding their decision in their own national history by writing, “We are Irish people who understand colonialism,” and describing themselves as longtime supporters of Palestinian advocacy efforts.
The band also took aim more broadly at the influence of wealth in decisions like this one, writing in a separate portion of their statement that “money doesn’t give you the right to own the conversation,” a line widely interpreted as a reference to Kraft’s alleged role in the situation.
With Beoga’s departure, Sheeran now faces his remaining stadium shows without the band that has backed him on stage for part of every performance throughout the tour, and with no opening acts left heading into his next scheduled stop in Philadelphia this weekend.
The Loop Tour, which began in January in Auckland, New Zealand, in support of Sheeran’s eighth studio album, “Play,” is scheduled to continue through several more major U.S. stadium dates, including stops at Gillette Stadium, Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, before eventually wrapping up in Mexico City in December.
So far, Sheeran has not announced any replacement acts for the vacated opening slots, leaving the question of what his upcoming stadium shows will look like without the lineup fans originally expected.
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