Metallica are in the midst of their Life Burns Faster residency at Sphere in Las Vegas. At Saturday night's show, James Hetfield took a side in arguably the biggest non-AI music news story of the year: the Macklemore/Ed Sheeran situation.
You probably heard about how Macklemore used his opening sets at Sheeran's New Jersey shows on Labor Day weekend to advocate for a free Palestine, then got kicked off the tour within days after Israeli groups protested and Robert Kraft rallied stadium owners against him. Shortly after Sheeran released a "both sides" statement and insisted that he is not complicit, his backing band and the rest of his opening acts quit the tour. When Sheeran returned to the stage, he doubled down on the idea that his shows should be a politics-free zone where people can escape from the real world.
Hetfield agrees with that sentiment. After expressing his appreciation for the time and money people sacrificed in order to be at the show, he said the following:
Thanks for coming to celebrate with us. And I just gotta say, Metallica's not here, like some other... entertainers, to influence you with their bullshit. OK? No bullshit. We're here to forget about all the outside shit. OK? Metallica's agenda is love, energy, and heavy music baby!
You really don't have to go out of your way to say that. You can just go out and play your show without making a big show of how apolitical it is. I'd argue that an uninvolved party going out of their way to shade Macklemore like that is nearly as alienating as Macklemore taking a political stand. But I guess the Sheeran rigamarole must have rubbed Hetfield the wrong way, just as he now perhaps has rubbed others the wrong way by sharing his thoughts. You can watch him deliver those remarks below.