{"id":230288,"date":"2026-07-31T09:11:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T09:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/230288\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T09:11:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T09:11:06","slug":"boy-george-pulls-out-of-musical-after-pro-israel-song-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/230288\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy George pulls out of musical after pro-Israel song backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Boy George, who was set to star as King Herod in the London musical from 3-15 August, said the song was “created using AI” in a social media post. [Getty]<\/p>\n

British pop icon\u00a0Boy George<\/a> pulled out of a West End production of the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” after facing a backlash for releasing a pro-Israel song, “We Will Dance Again”.<\/p>\n

The 65-year-old musician “will no longer be appearing in Jesus Christ Superstar at the London Palladium”, his manager Paul Kemsley said on social media.<\/p>\n

The singer, whose real name is George Alan O’Dowd, rose to fame in the 1980s as the flamboyant singer of the pop band Culture Club.<\/p>\n

This week he released a song supporting Israel and its war in Gaza, with lyrics including “you say genocide, I say war” and “when you’re attacked, that’s what the army’s for”,\u00a0\u00a0dismissing a characterisation<\/a>\u00a0that has been agreed on by leading human rights organisations, UN experts and genocide scholars.<\/p>\n

More than 70,000 people were killed in Gaza since Israel’s genocidal war<\/a> began on October 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since a so-called ‘ceasefire’ came into effect last October, at least Israeli attack have killed 1,214 Palestinians in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Boy George, who was set to star as King Herod in the London musical from 3-15 August, said the song was “created using AI” in a social media post.<\/p>\n

He said he was inspired to write the song after visiting the Nova exhibition which commemorates victims of the attack at the music festival and is being displayed in London.<\/p>\n

“Why not put the word ‘genocide’ in a song. Why are people suddenly uncomfortable with that word?” George said in a post on Instagram Threads.<\/p>\n

“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” his manager Kemsley said.<\/p>\n

“In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus,” he added.<\/p>\n

“Jesus Christ Superstar” was opening Friday on a run until 5 September. Culture Club is set to go on a UK tour in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boy George, who was set to star as King Herod in the London musical from 3-15 August, said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[9285,5656,37,22999,39715,691],"class_list":["post-230288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-gaza-genocide","tag-gaza-war","tag-israel","tag-musician","tag-pro-israel","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117013819370949050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}