Following the controversy that saw Macklemore removed from the remaining US dates of Ed Sheeran’s *Loop Tour*, Stephen White looks beyond the headlines to ask what the story reveals about power, money and freedom in the modern music industry.
Promoters, venues, billionaire owners and corporate interests can control the spaces where music happens, raising a bigger question about what happens when an artist’s politics collide with the commercial machinery behind the stage.
Then Macklemore announced FREE PALESTINE, a new series of concerts beginning in Dublin before moving to Paris and London, with proceeds going to organisations providing humanitarian, medical and other support to Palestinians.
The Importance of Being Macklemore is an essay about music, power, capitalism, political expression and the strange relationship between artists and the people who control the rooms they perform in.
