Ed Sheeran walked into Lincoln Financial Field on September 19th with no billed opening acts, a reshaped backing lineup and a week of controversy hanging over his Loop Tour. More than three hours later, he called the Philadelphia concert the best show he had ever played.
The performance was Sheeran’s first since Macklemore was removed from the tour and the remaining support acts began withdrawing in solidarity. Rather than avoiding the dispute, Sheeran addressed it before launching into a 29-song set built primarily around the guitar-and-loop-pedal format that has defined his stadium shows for years.
“I’ve had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I am so, so sorry,” Sheeran told the crowd, the Inquirer documented during the show.
By the end of the night, his assessment of the concert itself was considerably less conflicted. Sheeran told the Philadelphia crowd it had been “the best show” he had ever had, the concert review notes.
It was not, however, the completely solo performance suggested by some early descriptions of the night. Sheeran carried most of the concert himself but brought out replacement musicians for a six-song section, filling musical roles previously handled in part by Irish folk group Beoga.
The Loop Pedal Carried Most of the Stadium
Losing supporting musicians created an unusual touring problem for Sheeran, but not the same problem it would create for most stadium headliners.
His live show has been built around solo performance for much of his career. Guitar parts, percussion, vocal lines and rhythmic figures can be recorded live into a looping system and stacked in real time, allowing one performer to construct arrangements that grow far beyond one voice and one acoustic guitar.
That process is central enough to the current tour that it supplies the name. The Loop Tour does not normally present Sheeran as a conventional frontman standing in front of a permanent rock band.
Philadelphia opened with “Castle on the Hill” before moving through “Shivers,” “The A Team,” “Sapphire,” “Don’t,” “Eyes Closed” and “I’m a Mess.” The verified set list shows the first 12 songs performed before the temporary band section began.
That opening stretch demonstrated how much of Sheeran’s catalog can survive without conventional accompaniment. “The A Team” needs little beyond voice and guitar, while records such as “Shivers” and “Don’t” require looping and live rhythmic construction to recreate music originally built with considerably more production.
The format makes the mechanics visible. Instead of hiding the construction behind backing tracks or a conventional backing band, Sheeran repeatedly lets the audience watch an arrangement being assembled in real time.
Replacement Musicians Filled Beoga’s Six-Song Slot
Philadelphia was not entirely a one-man operation.
After “Give Me Love,” Sheeran brought out musicians led by fiddler Alicia Enstrom for a six-song stretch beginning with “Galway Girl.” “Nancy Mulligan,” “I Don’t Care,” “Old Phone,” “Camera” and “Celestial” followed before he returned to the predominantly solo format.
The Guardian’s account notes that the replacement musicians received one of the night’s standing ovations.
The section matters because Beoga had occupied more than an opening slot on earlier Loop Tour dates. The Irish group joined Sheeran inside his headline performance, particularly on material where fiddle and folk instrumentation are part of the arrangement.
Beoga withdrew after Macklemore’s removal, alongside scheduled U.S. support acts Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe. Finneas separately left his planned appearances on the South American leg.
Replacing those musicians therefore required more than deleting names from the poster. Songs such as “Galway Girl” and “Nancy Mulligan” still had musical roles to fill inside Sheeran’s own set.
Philadelphia showed the first solution: preserve the solo-looping architecture, then insert a compact live ensemble where particular arrangements benefit most from additional instrumental support.
Sheeran Addressed the Controversy Before the Music
The most significant change to the show happened before “Castle on the Hill.”
Sheeran used the opening minutes to address the upheaval surrounding Macklemore’s removal and his own response to it. He said promoter Messina Touring Group made the decision after objections from venues, while acknowledging that his attempts to remain publicly neutral had become part of the controversy.
His Philadelphia remarks also went further than his earlier statements on the conflict. Sheeran described the October 7th attack in Israel as horrific and called the situation in Gaza “catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate,” CBS Philadelphia records.
He framed his comments around humanitarian concerns and also expressed unease about venues influencing what performers can say onstage.
Macklemore had been removed following pro-Palestinian remarks during his MetLife Stadium appearances. Critics, including Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft, objected to rhetoric they characterized as antisemitic, a characterization Macklemore and his supporters dispute.
Sheeran’s remarks did not resolve that disagreement, but they represented a clear shift from earlier statements emphasizing his preference not to become a public political voice.
No Opening Acts Changed the Shape of the Night
No replacement opener was added to the Philadelphia bill. Sheeran even joked about the situation from the stage, telling the audience he hoped they had enjoyed the opening acts because he had heard they were great, the Guardian reported.
The concert was scheduled for 8 p.m. and began at approximately 8:15 p.m. Ticketmaster’s earlier 5:30 p.m. listing was for parking, not the concert itself.
Once Sheeran started, the performance ran until roughly 11:25 p.m. Setlist.fm records a show length of about three hours and 10 minutes.
Twenty-nine songs filled that time, including “Photograph,” “Thinking Out Loud,” “Perfect,” “I See Fire,” “Bloodstream” and “Afterglow.” The encore moved through “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You,” “Shape of You,” “Azizam” and “Bad Habits.”
The original Loop Tour concept offered several artists before Sheeran and familiar collaborators inside his set. Philadelphia instead became a long, concentrated headline performance with Sheeran responsible for almost all of the evening’s musical momentum.
The B-Stage Disappeared Over Safety Concerns
Another production change was less obvious from the song list.
The Philadelphia performance did not use the Loop Tour’s B-stage. Concert documentation identifies the secondary stage as absent because of safety concerns.
Sheeran’s current stadium production normally uses movement through the venue to bring portions of the performance closer to different parts of the audience. Removing that element concentrated Philadelphia around the main stage.
The change came after security around the concert received additional attention. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside Lincoln Financial Field before the show, while Philadelphia police increased their presence around the sports complex. No major disruption inside the stadium was reported.
From a production standpoint, the decision shows how quickly a stadium concert can be altered without being canceled. The Loop Tour had been designed around specific staging, musicians, support acts and audience movement, yet several of those pieces changed within days while the core show remained intact.
Twenty-Nine Songs Reached Across Sheeran’s Catalog
The upheaval did not lead Sheeran to radically narrow the musical scope of the show.
Early records such as “The A Team,” “Lego House” and “Give Me Love” sat beside current Play-era material including “Sapphire,” “Old Phone,” “Camera” and “Azizam,” keeping the altered concert connected to the album cycle driving the Loop Tour.
“Tenerife Sea” was performed in a higher key than usual, while two medleys widened the set beyond straightforward versions of Sheeran’s singles.
One sequence combined “Take It Back” with “Superstition” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Another moved through “Eastside,” “2002,” “Cold Water,” “Little Things” and “Love Yourself,” turning songs Sheeran wrote or collaborated on for other artists into part of his own stadium set.
The final stretch was deliberately less restrained. “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” opened the encore before “Shape of You,” “Azizam” and “Bad Habits” pushed the stadium toward the pop records with the largest rhythmic footprint.
The sequence also illustrates why Sheeran can absorb an unusual amount of live disruption without rebuilding the concert from scratch. His show already moves between bare guitar performances, loop-built arrangements, medleys and selective live-band sections rather than depending on one fixed instrumental configuration for three hours.
Philadelphia simply forced that flexibility further than originally intended.
Gillette Stadium Becomes the Next Test
The Philadelphia concert answered the immediate question of whether the Loop Tour could continue after its support structure fractured. It did not resolve the controversy surrounding the remaining dates.
Sheeran next plays Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on September 25th and 26th. The venue is owned by Kraft, placing the tour directly inside the stadium connected most closely to the objections surrounding Macklemore.
Additional dates follow in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Charlotte and Tampa, with Ticketmaster’s current schedule listing the remaining North American stadium stops.
Whether Philadelphia’s replacement musicians remain with the tour has not been established publicly, nor has Sheeran announced a new permanent slate of opening acts.
What Philadelphia established is narrower and musically more revealing.
The Loop Tour can function without its original support structure because Sheeran’s stadium production was already built around a performer who spends most of the night constructing the music himself. When fiddle, ensemble playing and additional instrumental color were needed, replacement musicians stepped into the six-song space Beoga had left behind.
The result was not the entirely solo stadium show suggested before the concert. It was a massive touring production stripped back until its most adaptable pieces were the ones that remained.
After a week that forced major changes to the Loop Tour, Sheeran walked offstage calling Philadelphia the best show he had ever played.
The next question is whether Philadelphia was an emergency version of the Loop Tour or the beginning of its new shape.