Ed Sheeran’s music is corny. That is of course a feature, not a bug. You might as well complain that grass is green and water is wet and that cheese tastes like cheese, as complain that Ed Sheeran is corny. You are of course under no obligation to enjoy his corniness, just so long as you remember that for the tens of millions of people who do, he is mega-popular because of his corn, not in spite of it. The corniness is the point.
Yet there is also a reason we generally use “corny” as an insult, isn’t there; implicit in the accusation of corniness is that the object of our ire is not only being shallow but insincere, even emotionally manipulative, like they are assuming a close interpersonal connection with us that they have not earned, that perhaps even distracts from the real thing.
I’m reminded of a story my wife once told me, of how when she was a teenager she attended EFY (now FSY), and afterwards excitedly told her Mom about all of the wonderful events and inspiring speakers and uplifting music (all so joyfully corny!) and moving testimony meetings she attended. Her mother was a very conservative, orthodox member of the Church who had encouraged her to attend; hence her surprise when her mother only responded warily, “Just be careful not to confuse emotion with the Spirit.”
This response caught my wife off-guard, though in retrospect it shouldn’t have: her mother was an adult convert, and hence knew full well that, while one can perhaps have an emotional response to the Spirit, that emotionalism is not the Spirit itself. She had needed to distinguish between the two before she could decide to join the Church herself. It was Joseph Smith who taught that the Spirit has no other effect than that of “pure intelligence” flowing into your body–emotion doesn’t even enter the equation–and it was Joseph Smith who also received the revelation now known as D&C 50:17-20, which reads: “Verily I say unto you, he that is ordained of me and sent forth to preach the word of truth by the Comforter, in the Spirit of truth, doth he preach it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? And if it be by some other way it is not of God. And again, he that receiveth the word of truth, doth he receive it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? If it be some other way it is not of God.”
The strongest argument against EFY and FSY was not the inherent corniness of the music and events, but that the corniness was substituting emotional manipulation for the Spirit of Truth. Even if said emotional manipulation is well-intentioned, it is not actually “by the Spirit of truth,” but by “some other way,” and is therefore “not of God.” Hence why so many an LDS Youth can attend FSY and have a marvelous experience and still go inactive after they graduate high school (at least if recent retention rates are any indicator); their testimony had not actually been rooted in the Spirit but by “some other way.”
Yet already I can anticipate the entirely valid objection: sometimes someone is corny because they are entirely earnest and honest and sincere in their beliefs! It is entirely too cynical to assume all corniness is fake or dishonest; there’s a reason so many people would rather hear corn than irony. Sometimes being around someone so proudly and unabashedly corny can be refreshing, even relieving, like when Christ encountered Nathaniel in John 1:47 and declared, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” You need to risk coming off at least a little corny and cringe if you want to be godly, and if you ever actually want to stand for something that matters.
Which brings us round to Macklemore, who is more than a little corny and cringe. My predominantly white students at Utah Valley University all gushed over Macklemore when I adjuncted there back in the 2010s, which does not exactly beat the corniness charges. When he won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2014 over Kendrick Lamar, the scandal was not just that a highly-derivative white artist was being awarded over a highly-original black artist (as has happened in American Pop music since the days of Elvis Presley and even Al Joplin), but rather that this absolutely goofy-ass cornball was getting honored over one of the hands-down coolest rappers of the decade. I mean, his break-out hit was a novelty song about thrift-shopping, for Pete’s sake! (It’s funny, but definitely not “What a Dollar Cost.”) But then, as with Ed Sheeran, the corniness was the point; it’s a feature, not a bug.
Hence it was no surprise to learn that Macklemore and Ed Sheeran had been friends since 2013. And when Ed Sheeran announced Macklemore as his opening act on his 2026 North American tour, no one batted an eyelash. Despite working in two very different genres, they had bonded over their shared, unabashed corniness.
And yet their corniness landed them in completely different places!
As has now been widely reported, Macklemore was kicked off Ed Sheeran’s tour after billionaire NFL-owner Robert Kraft took offense to Macklemore shouting “Free Palestine” during concerts. Kraft, most famous for getting a handjob from a prostitute during a sting operation in Jacksonville, Florida, took moral umbrage and accused Macklemore of anti-semitism—not Kanye West, who performed a track literally titled “Heil Hitler” in Kraft’s own stadium, but only Macklemore—for the sin of opposing genocide and the shooting of children in the head. Kraft quickly rallied other NFL owners to block Sheeran from performing in their stadiums unless he dropped Macklemore as his opening act.
Sheeran’s response to this ultimatum is instructive, because he is at present one of the biggest and wealthiest musical acts on the planet, and thus among the infinitesimally few singers alive who could financially weather a storm like this with ease. Hence, one might reasonably expect him to have the basic self-respect to tell Kraft to stuff it, no one tells him what to do, and sued each of these stadiums into submission for breach of contract. He could’ve then easily taken the you-can’t-fire-me-cause-I-quit approach and boycotted these stadiums right back till they remembered who actually sells the tickets around here. Billionaires are notorious bullies and therefore cowards, and when faced with all those lost ticket receipts and sky-rocketing legal costs, would have likely caved; but even if they hadn’t, Sheeran still would’ve come out on top, cause now he’d be the hero, the rebel, the people’s champion! This would’ve been a win-win for him! He wouldn’t even have had to say anything about Palestine if he was too squeamish! He could’ve played any venue he wanted after that! He was one of those blessed few who had both the cultural cache and financial security to pull that off!
But he didn’t. No, when faced with all those lost ticket receipts and potential legal costs himself—even though he already had more money than he could spend in several lifetimes—Ed Sheeran caved instead. And so the title of People’s Champion passed instead to Macklemore, whose anti-genocide advocacy suddenly gained a much wider platform than if he had continued on as a mere opening act. As a result, all of Sheeran’s other opening acts—who had far less financial security and far more to lose than Sheeran—suddenly quit in solidarity to follow Macklemore too, including Sheeran’s own backing band, because no one is inspired to stick with a coward who doesn’t rise to the occasion (something I wish church leadership would understand as they fret about retention rates while staying silent on mass-deportations). Sheeran not only failed to seize the moment, but like so many people in positions of power today, failed to recognize that there was a moment to seize in the first place.
Sheeran is obviously a very savvy businessman, he didn’t get this far by not giving people what they want, so how is it he didn’t give them what they wanted now? How did he misread the room this badly? Heck, how could he have not seen this all coming in the first place and been prepared for the possible billionaire backlash? Macklemore had dropped his pro-Palestine track “Hinds Hall” clear back in 2024, after all (I do wonder what all my old UVU students think of him nowadays), so none of his advocacy was out of left field here; and Sheeran’s own backing band were founding members of Irish Artists for Palestine, so how did he not know which side they’d pick when push came to shove? Shouldn’t he have expressed firmer solidarity with his own musicians just to avoid getting pantsed in public like this? If he couldn’t do the right thing for moral reasons, couldn’t he have at least done it for self-interested ones? How could he be so blind?
Perhaps because self-interest is its own blindness. A liar assumes everyone lies, a thief assumes everyone steals, and the self-interested assumes everyone else is only in it for themselves, too; hence it apparently did not occur to Sheeran that any of his other opening acts would be willing to lose money by taking a stand, because he would never do that. He’d already shown that when he caved so easily to the demands of a billionaire. Hence why he got caught with his pants down when someone really did choose principles over a paycheck.
Christ had taught that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, and Ed Sheeran’s heart was always literally upon treasure—that is, on all those lost ticket receipts and merchandise sales, not the hospitals bombed and houses destroyed and land stolen and and people starved and children shot in the head—while Macklemore held his principles sacred, and did not sell them for money. When the wicked one approached them both (as our own Temple endowment warns will happen to all of us) and asked, “Have you any money? You can buy anything in this world with money,” Macklemore was the one who said “We have sufficient for our needs.” Sheeran meanwhile is who bent the knee to he who declared that with gold and silver he would buy up armies and navies, false priests who oppress, and tyrants who destroy, and reign with blood and horror upon this earth. Just so long as the checks cleared, he wouldn’t look too closely at who was raining down horror upon whom.
So how is it again that these two absolute cornballs landed in completely different places? Perhaps it’s because Macklemore really was corny in the best sense of the word, meaning he was entirely sincere and earnest and honest in his “hope for a better world” (Ether 12:6), in a manner that many could consider cringe, but which Macklemore was fully willing to look cringe for, because certain things are simply more important than looking cool. His unabashed corniness is what made him hold true to his integrity when the chips were down. Here was a man indeed, in whom is no guile.
Sheeran, by contrast, was actually only corny in the deeply cynical sense—similar to the EFY conferences that my mother-in-law was so wary of—a cynicism that assumes, even if only subconsciously, that all sincerity is fake anyways, so therefore emotional manipulation is an entirely valid way to make a living. Sheeran only made corny music cause it sells, not because he ever actually believed a word of it, because he does not appear to have ever actually believed in anything to begin with.
That is, upon second thought, maybe the problem with Ed Sheeran is that he was never corny enough.