Ed Sheeran walked out alone at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday night, no opening act, no backing band, and spent the first few minutes talking instead of singing.

It was his first show since Macklemore was pulled from the Loop Tour, and the crowd in Philadelphia knew exactly why he was standing there without his usual support acts.

"I've had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I'm so, so sorry," Sheeran told the stadium, according to both Variety and Just Jared, who separately reported his remarks. He said he never wanted to be "an activist musician" but found himself pulled into what he called the most complex political argument on the planet.

What actually happened at MetLife

The trouble started at Sheeran's Sept. 4 and 5 shows at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where Macklemore used his set to talk about Gaza and the West Bank, told the crowd "Free Palestine," and performed his 2024 protest song "Hind's Hall." Groups including the Israeli-American Council pushed back hard, and Messina Touring Group, which promotes the U.S. Leg of the tour, said venues had made clear they wouldn't host shows with Macklemore on the bill. Messina framed it as a call it had to make to protect hundreds of thousands of ticket holders from cancellations.

Sheeran said earlier this week that the removal wasn't his call. Onstage Saturday he stuck to that line but went further, saying he's "deeply worried" about venues pre-approving what performers can say, calling it something that happens in plenty of places he tours but shouldn't happen "in the free world."

Sheeran gets specific

What's new is how far he went on the substance. He described the October 7 attack on a music festival in Israel as horrific, said what's happening in Gaza is "catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate," and said the "systemic injustice" unfolding in the West Bank can't be ignored either. He was careful to frame it as a humanitarian issue rather than a political stance, and said he's talking to people "across the spectrum" while he figures out how to help.

The fallout has already gone well past Macklemore. He's donating his full $1 million tour salary to Palestinian relief groups, and Robert Kraft has said Sheeran personally asked him to match that with a $2 million donation of his own toward the region. Meanwhile the tour's roster keeps thinning out. Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham, Finneas and Irish band Beoga have all withdrawn from upcoming dates, each citing Macklemore's removal as the reason.

Sheeran insisted the Philadelphia show would go ahead as a space where people who disagree on everything else could still stand next to each other. It did. The bigger question is whether the rest of the Loop Tour, now missing most of its original supporting cast, holds together the same way.