Before Beyoncé, before Cher, before Madonna, there was Googoosh.

The 75-year-old Iranian megastar catapulted to stardom in Iran during the 1970s, only to be silenced by the Islamist regime that took power after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 2000, she was finally allowed to leave Iran to live in exile.

For Iranians – particularly those in the diaspora – Googoosh symbolizes an era of cosmopolitanism in late-Pahlavi Iran, the period from the mid-1950s until 1979 when Iran’s popular music, cinema, television and fashion embraced modernity and questioned social norms.

But as protests roil Iran and the nation’s clerical leaders find their grip on power slipping, the “Voice of Iran,” as Googoosh is known, hasn’t turned up the volume. Instead, she’s found herself putting her farewell tour on pause.

“Everyone is waiting for my last concert in LA,” Googoosh told reporters in December 2025, “but … I am not going to sing until my country is rescued.”

Googoosh’s refusal to sing is not a sign of hesitation but a conscious political gesture – one that draws its force from her singular position in Iran’s cultural history.

Over the past several years, I’ve studied Googoosh’s trajectory as a musical and cultural icon. For Iranians inside and outside the country, she’s been a canvas onto which they’ve projected nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Iran, memories of rupture and loss, and fantasies of resistance.

Born Faegheh Atashin in 1950, Googoosh was raised in Tehran by Muslim Azeri parents who had fled Soviet Azerbaijan. Although civil authorities registered her under the Perso-Arabic name Faegheh, her stage name, “Googoosh” – actually a male........

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