Publicity materials for Googoosh: A Sinful Voicea brand new memoir by the Iranian singer in exile, calls her a predecessor to Beyoncé and Madonna—a comparability that may appear over-the-top to American readers however in actual fact sells her brief. Googoosh, born Faegheh Atashin, is certainly the best pop star in Iranian historical past, however for her compatriots, she has lengthy represented one thing extra: In a rustic extremely polarized over politics, faith, and training, she straddles all divides. Shiite clerics, Baluch fishermen, and Tehrani youngsters have all spent hours listening to Googoosh. It’s onerous to search out an Iranian who wouldn’t know the lyrics to considered one of her songs.
What makes this really exceptional is that she was banned for 21 years from singing, starting with the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and ending when she was allowed to depart the nation in 2000. I grew up within the Nineties in Tehranthe identical metropolis she was dwelling in, and despite the ban, her music by no means felt far-off. She was a favourite of mine and in addition of my dad and mom, grandparents, and youthful cousins. Every of us had our personal touchstone songs, however each era had time for Googoosh.
One supply of her persistent fame is pervasive nostalgia for the relative prosperity that preceded the revolution. This eager for a supposed golden age has generated many memes and on-line spoofs, however like most issues Iranian, it’s typically misunderstood by outsiders. A lot of her compatriots don’t miss the repressive rule of the shah; they yearn particularly for the advantages of the Seventies: double-digit financial progress, a dramatic rise in dwelling requirements and worldwide esteem, unprecedented social liberalism, and a way of cultural effervescence, of which Googoosh is a primary instance.
On one stage, she was related to the management that may be displaced by the fundamentalists. A darling of the state broadcaster and an everyday on the imperial court docket, Googoosh sang for the shah’s household and was dispatched to Oman to carry out for troops preventing a left-wing insurgency there (an image of that efficiency is within the e-book). However Googoosh was additionally taken up by city intellectuals who sympathized with the shah’s opponents. Behrouz Vossoughi, a new-wave actor beloved by anti-shah rebels, was her co-star in lots of movies and finally her second husband. A few of her songwriters had been dedicated lefties. The infamous secret police, SAVAK, requested her to take “sure summary lyrics” out of her songs, fearing that they “might have been interpreted with anti-regime undertones,” she recounts. These lyrics had been erased from recordings, however she nonetheless sang them defiantly in reside performances, even for the royal household.
Within the e-book, Googoosh makes clear her lack of curiosity in politics: “All I cared about was poetry, the feelings and the sensations that allowed me to launch no matter I had pent up.” This line would possibly ring hole in a rustic as politically charged as Iran, however it strikes me as not solely honest but additionally key to her fame. Her broad recognition is owed to her real disinterest in partisanship, coupled with an genuine love of her homeland. In her memoir, the story of her life converges with the story of her nation—a story without delay triumphant and tragic. Co-written with Tara Dehlavi, the e-book is charmingly modest and accessible, even for many who know little about her. It isn’t making an attempt to be a primer on Iranian music historical past; as an alternative, Googoosh recounts her tumultuous life in an unpretentious confessional type.
Each of Googoosh’s dad and mom grew up in Iran’s giant Azeri Turkic neighborhood, and Azeri was her first language. Her father, Saber Atashin, spoke Persian with a thick Turkic accent that she believes may need restricted his prospects as an actor. Her maternal grandfather had served as a colonel within the Azerbaijan Folks’s Republica short-lived autonomous statelet backed by the Soviets. Its collapse, in 1946, led to his execution and his household’s banishment to Tehran, the place Googoosh was born, in 1950.
Her rise to stardom was painful at each stage. Googoosh’s father had her carry out dangerous acrobatic tips onstage from the age of three. After her dad and mom separated, she lived along with her father and his new spouse, Mouness—a stepmother she portrays as a monster. It didn’t assist that her mom initially vanished with no goodbye; the lady was instructed she was lifeless. (She returned when her daughter was 5, Googoosh writes, “with none rationalization.”)
She describes being mocked at college as a result of she was “within the leisure enterprise, which was thought of decrease class,” and since she was the one little one showing in Tehran’s legendary cabarets. As she writes, “Even New Yorkers could be shocked by a baby that younger performing late at night time in a classy nightclub.” However like many child performers, she discovered solace in her world on the stage. As she describes it, she turned Iran’s best-known pop star “not as a result of I needed to however as a result of I needed to”; her voice was “the one factor I had some management over.” It was, in brief, “my remedy.” She was not but 10 when she performed the lead function within the 1960 movie Worry and Hopeand he or she would go on to star in 29 films.
Scandal and torment trailed her grownup profession from the beginning. At 17, she married Mahmoud Ghorbani, a struggling cabaret director; had a baby; and was ceaselessly scrutinized—baseless rumors alleged that she was a foul mom or a drug addict. It might be onerous for anybody to endure such public notoriety, by no means thoughts a younger girl with little household to fall again on. She writes that Ghorbani’s infidelities doomed their marriage. (Ghorbani didn’t reply to requests for remark, however previously few days, he has launched movies in assist of Googoosh.) Then she married Vossoughi, seemingly the love of her life—however in line with Googoosh, he was jealous and controlling, which doomed their marriage. Her third husband, Homayoun Mesdaghi, suffered from a freebase-cocaine habit, she writes. Unbeknown to many, she was typically penniless, betrayed by husbands and managers. As she tells it, her marital life turned an all-too-familiar story; exploitative males surrounded her and took benefit.
Jeremy Chan / Getty
Googoosh acting at Scotiabank Area in Toronto in 2025. She stays broadly widespread with Iranians internationally.
Though she recounts her struggling with confidence and dignity, the distinction between her public picture and her non-public life is stunning. At the same time as she sang of heartbreak, she typically sounded joyful—the Dua Lipa of her day. In 1972, she shaved her head after which stored her hair brief, launching a style revolution. The type immediately turned often called Googooshi, and the identify has caught to today. Her look and her lyrics impressed envy. “I need to sing proper right here, just for my very own coronary heart,” she crooned, testifying to a lifetime of liberation. However within the memoir, she offers us the backstory: The fabled haircut was “a direct results of my emotions of hopelessness in the direction of the top of my first marriage,” she writes, “my method of punching a wall.”
For all her ache, Googoosh doesn’t sound bitter on the web page. She recounts with pleasure the emergence of Tehran within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s as a cosmopolitan hub. Iranians flocked to see movies comparable to Federico Fellini’s The Dolce Vita and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Scorching. Avenue life flourished and intellectuals gathered at new universities and cafés. Googoosh obtained to carry out in Italy, Tunisia, and France with the likes of Ray Charles, Tina Turnerand Charles Aznavour. She regaled King Juan Carlos of Spain when he visited Iran in 1978.
All of that got here to an abrupt finish in 1979 because the Islamic Republic, in its quest to construct a puritan new man, severely restricted the humanities. Solo singing by any girl, even of a non secular tune, was banned (and stays so in the present day). Googoosh represented what the mullahs hated most: a free girl doing what she favored, carrying what she favored, even showing nude in a movie. Ludicrous tales unfold, alleging that she had labored with SAVAK and even personally tortured a cleric.
Googoosh, who was in New York when the shah’s regime was overthrown, determined to return to Iran just a few months later; she remembers telling Mesdaghi that she would “relatively die in my homeland by the hands of zealot revolutionaries than dying little by little, day after day, in exile.” In her homeland, she confronted not solely unemployment but additionally authorities harassment. In 1980, she was arrested and held for a month in a dingy basement, collectively along with her fellow pop singer Marjan and quite a few intercourse employees. The regime needed to make some extent about the way it noticed feminine singers. She made mates with them and took inspiration from their power in dealing with the goons of the brand new regime.
After her launch, she was barred from leaving the nation, even to see her son, who had fled Iran, finally settling in Los Angeles. Compelled to signal a pledge by no means to sing or carry out once more, she lived an typically quiet life. Within the Nineties, she married the Iranian filmmaker Masoud Kimiai, who finally helped her get a passport; in 2000, she left for a world tour and by no means returned.
Since leaving her nation, Googoosh has lived a rock-star life in exile, promoting out venues such because the Royal Albert Corridor and Madison Sq. Backyard. Excluding political figures, she is perhaps probably the most well-known Iranian on the earth in the present day. And but, her most memorable songs date again to the Seventies. The revolution killed her profession when she was 29, however not her recognition or her legend.
To the sure consternation of the Islamic Republic, Googoosh and her era of musicians have solely grown in stature. Some Iranians save as much as trip in Dubai or Armenia simply to see them onstage. An Iranian present just like American Idolhelmed by Googoosh, was broadcast from London to tens of millions of viewers in Iranian properties through satellite tv for pc. An Iranian-born hijabi dwelling in Germany gained a season, presaging an Iran during which folks with or with out the veil can reside peacefully subsequent to at least one one other. As Googoosh notes all through the e-book, her followers embrace many non secular Iranians, together with the grandnephew of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Googoosh’s patriotism pervades her memoir, however it’s by no means showy. Talking of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s assault on Iran, she writes that “whether or not or not you supported the brand new regime, everybody was united for Iran.” Struggle veterans have reciprocated her assist by the years, sending dozens of appreciative letters. At the same time as they fought underneath the Islamist slogans of the brand new regime, they secretly listened to her music, on cassette or on Radio Kuwait. “Your voice and the melodies introduced peace to our troubled minds,” a soldier wrote, including that her music reminded his comrades of their schoolyard crushes and first loves.
If Googoosh continues to talk to Iranians, it’s maybe as a result of her story stands for Iran: glory and rising pains within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, quiet resilience within the ’80s and ’90s, reemergence within the 2000s, and continued hope for a greater future. She reminds us of our greatest days and our worst days and, most necessary, of a homeland price caring about.
By Googoosh
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