Publicity materials for Googoosh: A Sinful Voice, a 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 truth sells her quick. 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 schooling, she straddles all divides. Shiite clerics, Baluch fishermen, and Tehrani youngsters have all spent hours listening to Googoosh. It’s laborious to search out an Iranian who wouldn’t know the lyrics to one in all her songs.
What makes this actually 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 go away the nation in 2000. I grew up within the Nineties in Tehran, the identical metropolis she was residing in, and regardless of the ban, her music by no means felt distant. 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 usually misunderstood by outsiders. Lots of her compatriots don’t miss the repressive rule of the shah; they yearn particularly for the advantages of the Seventies: double-digit financial development, a dramatic rise in residing requirements and worldwide esteem, unprecedented social liberalism, and a way of cultural effervescence, of which Googoosh is a first-rate instance.
On one degree, 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 courtroom, 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 cherished by anti-shah rebels, was her co-star in lots of movies and finally her second husband. A few of her songwriters have been dedicated lefties. The infamous secret police, SAVAK, requested her to take “sure summary lyrics” out of her songs, fearing that they “may have been interpreted with anti-regime undertones,” she recounts. These lyrics have been erased from recordings, however she nonetheless sang them defiantly in dwell 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 may ring hole in a rustic as politically charged as Iran, but it surely 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 directly 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’s not attempting to be a primer on Iranian music historical past; as a substitute, Googoosh recounts her tumultuous life in an unpretentious confessional model.
Each of Googoosh’s dad and mom grew up in Iran’s massive Azeri Turkic neighborhood, and Azeri was her first language. Her father, Saber Atashin, spoke Persian with a thick Turkic accent that she believes might need restricted his prospects as an actor. Her maternal grandfather had served as a colonel within the Azerbaijan Individuals’s Republic, a 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 out a goodbye; the lady was instructed she was lifeless. (She returned when her daughter was 5, Googoosh writes, “with none rationalization.”)
She describes being mocked in school as a result of she was “within the leisure enterprise, which was thought of decrease class,” and since she was the one baby showing in Tehran’s legendary cabarets. As she writes, “Even New Yorkers can be shocked by a toddler that younger performing late at evening in a classy nightclub.” However like many child performers, she discovered solace in her world on the stage. As she describes it, she grew to become 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 position within the 1960 movie Concern and Hope, and she or he would go on to star in 29 motion pictures.
Scandal and torment trailed her grownup profession from the beginning. At 17, she married Mahmoud Ghorbani, a struggling cabaret director; had a toddler; and was ceaselessly scrutinized—baseless rumors alleged that she was a nasty mom or a drug addict. It might be laborious 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 up to now few days, he has launched movies in help 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 usually penniless, betrayed by husbands and managers. As she tells it, her marital life grew to become 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 standard 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. Whilst she sang of heartbreak, she usually sounded joyful—the Dua Lipa of her day. In 1972, she shaved her head after which stored her hair quick, launching a trend revolution. The model immediately grew to become referred to as Googooshi, and the title 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 provides us the backstory: The fabled haircut was “a direct results of my emotions of hopelessness in the direction of the tip of my first marriage,” she writes, “my approach 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 La Dolce Vita and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Scorching. Road life flourished and intellectuals gathered at new universities and cafés. Googoosh bought to carry out in Italy, Tunisia, and France with the likes of Ray Charles, Tina Turner, and 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 music, was banned (and stays so at present). Googoosh represented what the mullahs hated most: a free girl doing what she appreciated, carrying what she appreciated, 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 a number of months later; she recollects telling Mesdaghi that she would “reasonably 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 a lot of intercourse employees. The regime needed to make a degree about the way it noticed feminine singers. She made buddies 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 usually 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 likely to be probably the most well-known Iranian on the earth at present. 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 Idol, helmed by Googoosh, was broadcast from London to thousands and thousands of viewers in Iranian properties through satellite tv for pc. An Iranian-born hijabi residing in Germany received a season, presaging an Iran wherein individuals with or with out the veil can dwell peacefully subsequent to 1 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.” Warfare veterans have reciprocated her help via the years, sending dozens of appreciative letters. Whilst 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 vital, of a homeland value caring about.
By Googoosh
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