The Ballyshannon connection to the Ed Sheeran boycott
.jpg?trim=0,47,0,46&crop=&width=640&quality=70&enable=upscale)
The lead singer of Danish band Lukas Graham, who opted off the tour, is Lukas Forchhammer. whose late father Eugene was from Ballyshannon
One of the three opening act bands that pulled out of Ed Sheeran’s world tour has strong connections to south Donegal.
Irish singer Aaron Rowe, US musician Finneas and Lukas Graham posted on social media that they had withdrawn from Sheeran’s Loop Tour.
Lukas Graham is officially a Danish pop and soul band, whose lead singer is Lukas Forchhammer. His father was Eugene Graham, an Irish music tour booker, born in Ballyshannon.
Eugene eventually moved to Denmark and settled down in the anarchist commune of Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen with Lukas's mother, Eva Forchhammer, and travelled that frequently back to Ireland, to Donegal and Dublin, Lukas was quoted as saying he spent “half his life” there.
In September 2012, just as Lukas Graham was beginning to find major musical success in Europe, Eugene passed away suddenly from a heart attack at the age of 61.
Long before his music career took off, Forchhammer was a well-known child actor in Denmark. He famously starred as the character Grunk in the first three instalments of the highly popular Danish family film series Krummerne (The Crumbs), which was released in the early 1990s.
As the frontman of Lukas Graham, he performed live at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards on February 12, 2017. During the ceremony, the band performed their massive international hit single, "7 Years", which was also nominated for three major awards that evening, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
Lukas Graham decided to leave Sheeran’s tour in solidarity with the rapper Macklemore after he was abruptly dropped from the lineup over pro-Palestinian comments when, on stage, he expressed support for Palestinians in Gaza and called for "free Palestine".
Following the speech, several billionaire stadium owners—including Robert Kraft—and tour promoters issued an ultimatum, refusing to host the tour dates if Macklemore remained on the bill. The promoters ultimately removed Macklemore from the tour. Ed Sheeran stated that the decision was made strictly by the promoters and venue owners, not by him personally. In protest of what they viewed as censorship, all remaining opening acts voluntarily quit the tour in a massive wave of solidarity.