You were the opener once, Ed. You know the job. Now do the headliner’s.

My husband and I had our first dance to “Thinking Out Loud.” It is a song about being seventy and still wanting the same person, which is a lot to promise in front of everyone you know, and Ed Sheeran gets it said in four minutes without once sounding like he is making a speech.

I have never seen Ed Sheeran live. I am a Swiftie, and he came to me the way he came to a lot of us: singing the boy half of “Everything Has Changed,” then opening every North American date of the Red Tour in 2013—a ginger with a loop pedal warming up arenas full of people who had come for someone else. That was enough to get him into my wedding.

Last Friday he headlined MetLife, and his opener wore a keffiyeh and led the stadium in “Free Palestine.” Jewish families walked out. He has said nothing. I could yell. Plenty of people already are, and I spend my working life on what Jewish people are owed in rooms they paid to be in, so I could yell professionally. I am going to try explaining first, because I think he can still hear it.

What a Jewish Fan Saw From the Upper Deck

Picture a Jewish fan in the upper deck. There were real ones, so this is not hard. She bought the tickets in the spring. She drove to the Meadowlands with her husband and her daughter for a night of love songs, and the opener walked out with a keffiyeh around his neck.

Then the screens filled with a Palestinian flag and the words Free Palestine. Then his Gaza protest song, “Hind’s Hall,” dedicated to the Columbia encampments. Then the word she has spent two years hearing aimed at her: genocide. Then the two words he said he had wanted to say on stadium stages across America, and tens of thousands of people around her said them back. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Then Cuba, the Congo, Sudan, Iran, and ICE as a terror........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)