The Last Mixed Tape

Shane MacGowan changed Irish music by changing what Irishness was allowed to sound like.
From the traditional songs of his childhood in Tipperary to the collision of Irish folk and punk that created The Pogues, Shane MacGowan spent his life challenging the boundaries of Irish culture.
He was accused of corrupting Irish music. Instead, he helped redefine it.
The Pogues gave voice and dignity to an Irish diaspora living between countries, while Shane’s own understanding of Irish identity was never confined by borders. Decades later, a new generation of Irish artists from Lankum and The Mary Wallopers to Madra Salach and Fontaines D.C. are taking that same restless relationship with tradition in entirely different directions.

The Sickbed of MacGowan is an exploration of Shane MacGowan, The Pogues, Irish music, Irish identity and the musicians continuing to tear open the boundaries of what Irish culture can be.

For almost three decades, Garvaghy Road in Portadown has been at the centre of one of Northern Ireland’s most enduring disputes over parades, identity, history and territory.
In 2026, the Drumcree standoff has returned to the headlines.
As the Orange Order seeks to march along the Garvaghy Road for the first time in almost 30 years, local residents have gathered in protest. And amid the confrontation, something unexpected has become part of the story: music.
The Mary Wallopers and members of Beoga have performed on Garvaghy Road alongside a community using music, singing and collective expression as part of its resistance.
In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores Garvaghy Road, Drumcree, Irish music, cultural memory, political protest and the strange power of music to occupy a space.

Following the controversy that saw Macklemore removed from the remaining US dates of Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour, Stephen White looks beyond the headlines to ask what the story reveals about power, money and freedom in the modern music industry.
Promoters, venues, billionaire owners and corporate interests can control the spaces where music happens, raising a bigger question about what happens when an artist’s politics collide with the commercial machinery behind the stage.
Then Macklemore announced FREE PALESTINE, a new series of concerts beginning in Dublin before moving to Paris and London, with proceeds going to organisations providing humanitarian, medical and other support to Palestinians.
The Importance of Being Macklemore is an essay about music, power, capitalism, political expression and the strange relationship between artists and the people who control the rooms they perform in.

Macklemore walked onto the stage at MetLife Stadium and said two words: Free Palestine.
What followed became much bigger than a moment between songs.
Macklemore was removed from the remaining US dates of Ed Sheeran’s tour. The promoter said venues had objected to his continued involvement. Sheeran said the decision was not his, and that he had tried to find a way through the dispute.
Then the other artists started walking. Finneas. Lukas Graham. Aaron Rowe. Beoga.
Suddenly, this wasn’t simply a story about one rapper making a political statement. It became a story about power, money, free expression and the machinery behind the modern stadium tour.
In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, I ask the uncomfortable question: Is Ed Sheeran a coward?
Sheeran describes himself as apolitical. He says his concerts should be places of safety, sanctuary and escape from politics. But what happens when politics enters the room anyway? What happens when the biggest artist on the stage has the power to challenge the machinery around him and chooses not to?
Macklemore has since pledged his $1 million in tour earnings to organisations supporting Palestinians. Robert Kraft has said Sheeran asked him to commit $2 million towards humanitarian relief.
And while the music industry argues over who was right and who was wrong, we cannot lose sight of the people at the centre of this story.
Palestinians living through the consequences of this war.
This is The Last Mixed Tape.
Free Palestine.

With Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger arriving in cinemas, Stephen looks at Liam and Noel Gallagher, the sixteen-year feud that kept them apart, and what their reunion might tell us about masculinity, friendship, pride and forgiveness.
Oasis embodied a particular kind of masculinity in the 1990s. Swagger, aggression, emotional armour and the refusal to back down. But beneath all of that, their music gave a generation of young men permission to feel something they didn’t always have the language for.
Now Liam and Noel are approaching 60. They’ve spent years fighting, refusing to speak and trying to prove they didn’t need each other. Yet when Oasis finally returned to the stage, reconciliation didn’t arrive through some grand emotional conversation.
This is an episode about Oasis, masculinity and what happens when the things we once needed to prove stop mattering.
The Last Mixed Tape is a music and culture podcast exploring the stories, ideas and contradictions hiding underneath the songs we love.