Pop Star Googoosh on Iran’s Censorship, Exile and Her Fight to Perform

By Mandy Taheri

“The stage is my first homeland,” 75-year-old Iranian singer Googoosh tells Newsweek from her Los Angeles home, noting that her second is Iran. 

A child performer who became one of the defining voices of pre-revolution Iranian pop, with a catalog of hit songs and lasting cultural influence, Googoosh has spent the past quarter century in exile, refusing to be silenced again. 

For nearly two-and-a-half decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the boundary-pushing artist captivated audiences in Iran with daring performances and bold style choices, writing in her memoir that despite Tehran’s “growing cosmopolitanism, it was still scandalous for a child my age to be singing in cabarets.” 

By her mid-twenties, Googoosh was more than a household name—she was a national sensation, singing for the Shah, diplomats and celebrities. With major hits like “Pol,” “Do Panjereh” and “Kooh,” Googoosh became a staple of Iranian pop, her emotional songs dipping into love and longing, poetry and social feeling, and reaching millions inside and outside the country. 

But her high profile, coupled with the fact she was a young woman publicly performing, made her an immediate target once the Islamic Republic took hold, like many other artists, entertainers and public figures.

While much of her early music didn’t delve into politics, her widespread influence and affiliation with the Shah resulted in brief imprisonments, interrogations, confiscations and, most permanently, a ban on singing and performing in Iran. 

With her voice shackled and her passport revoked, Googoosh was trapped in a rapidly transforming Iran, its sweeping religious, social and cultural shifts rendering the country almost unrecognizable from the more secular, outward-looking nation shaped over the previous two decades by modernization reforms like the White Revolution and the Family Protection Law, which expanded women’s rights. 

After 21 years under the restrictive regime, Googoosh left her country for the last time and reclaimed her fated spot on the stage. Since then, she has performed around the world and worked with both Iranian and international artists, including a recent feature on Ed Sheeran’s playful pop track “Azizam,” meaning “my dear.”

Googoosh says she enjoyed the collaboration and the chance to bring her mother tongue into the mainstream, saying: “I love to express Farsi language and Farsi songs.” 

Her forthcoming memoir, Googoosh: A Sinful Voice, weaves together her memories of childhood, pre-revolutionary Iran, love and how her burgeoning career clashed with the Islamic Republic’s tightening grip on her life and country. 

“I came to see it as my duty to tell my story,” she tells Newsweek on a video call explaining the impetus for her memoir, adding, “and the story of my people, who are still silent.” 

Unforgiving Childhood 

Born Faegheh Atashin in 1950 in Tehran, the performer has gone by the Armenian nickname Googoosh since she was born, with her closest friends and family referring to her as Googi. 

Her childhood was unforgiving. Her parents separated, her mother all but vanished for years and her father brought home a stepmother, Mouness, who Googoosh says ruled the household with cruelty. 

At around 3 years old, Googoosh joined her acrobat father’s routine, perched on a chair balanced on his chin as he walked a tightrope. One of her first forays onto the stage, the act marked the start of her storied performing career which would later include acting and singing. 

The star racked up around 30 films across two decades, landing a leading role before she even turned 10, and by her early 20s, she won the Sepas Film Festival award for best actress for her performance in Bita. 

Yet “music above all was my refuge,” she writes in her memoir, adding: “My voice was the only thing I had some control over.”  

Off-screen, she sang on a variety of stages, including cabaret clubs, becoming the family’s sole breadwinner before her teenage years. By 16, she released her first record, “Ghesseye Vafa,” having previously only sung covers. 

The bright spots of her childhood mainly revolved around her singing, the stage and her brother, Fereydoun, known as “Fery.” Despite constant challenges at home, the natural-born performer explains to Newsweek: “When I am on the stage I am all by my own, nobody can hurt me, nobody can force me to do anything. The stage is my place where I can do whatever I want to do for my audience, for my listeners.” 

The stage was her reprieve, her lifeline, the place where her pain disappeared, melting away both physical aches and the emotional strain from her parents, her lovers and later her exile. 

At 17, Googoosh married a cabaret manager, a union that lasted six years and brought her son, Kambiz, into the world. She would later marry three more times, relationships marked at different moments by public scrutiny, financial strain, political pressure and personal turmoil. 

She was not yet 30 years old when the Islamic Revolution was underway, a movement that would completely change her life, liberty and career. 

In the winter of 1978, Googoosh, accompanied by her third husband, was working in Los Angeles, and then New York City. Homesick and restless, she at times turned to drugs in the dark months. She longed to go home, even as news of the country’s revolution unraveled with reports of millions fleeing and widespread crackdowns.  

She told her son, then at boarding school in Switzerland, that they would meet again in Tehran—a promise, along with her bond to Iran, that drew her back despite warnings and nationwide unrest. 

“It was because I love my country and I wanted to be in my own place and my own country. They told me don’t come, they’re going to kill you,” she recalls. 

In her memoir, Googoosh describes herself as “slowly dying in NYC,” as she was “far from my home, far from my child and everyone I loved, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute. I decided that I would rather die in my homeland.” 

The Islamic Revolution 

The revolution was a seismic shift for the country. Leading up to it, mass anti-government demonstrations against the Shah drew different factions seeking change— including leftists, students, clerics, nationalists and minorities, among others.  

Once the Shah was ousted and the upheaval gave way to the Islamic Republic led by the hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, many who had welcomed the uprising found themselves sidelined, disillusioned or even facing persecution. 

The post-revolution crackdown came fast. The arts, nightlife, universities, media, women’s public lives and any perceived form of dissent quickly came under fire. Islamic Revolutionary Committees, or komiteh—predecessors to today’s morality police—swept up people for past affiliations, outspoken views and public behavior that ran against new rules or their Islam code, causing thousands to seek refuge abroad. 

“There were many artists, actors, actresses, singers held in Evin Prison, not in jail, [but] for interrogations,” Googoosh recalls, noting they had all been questioned for their affiliations and work, she especially so, given her performances for the royal family, the Pahlavis, and her modern style and lyrics.

After repeated interrogations at the infamous prison, the young performer was forced to sign away her career, her life and her identity.  

“I signed the paper that I swore I am not going to sing, I am not going to perform at any parties, anywhere. My voice, my face, was banned,” she tells Newsweek. They even took the deed to her home and confiscated her passport. 

Over the next few years, she receded from public life. “Maybe sometimes I just whispered for my friends, [but] not singing,” she recounts. She passed the time playing hours of solitaire, at times smoking opium with her husband and tuning into her secret satellite dish. 

The deafening silence of Googoosh hit many fans, some preserving her voice through discretely circulating banned cassette tapes. Then, in 2000, a couple of years after reformist President Mohammad Khatami took office, her husband and his film producer helped her leave Iran on what was supposed to be a brief trip, but instead launched her world tour. 

Returning to the Stage 

Much of Googoosh’s story is about reclaiming agency—first from her family, particularly her stepmother, and later from the state. 

Her return to the music world came at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre in 2000. Taking the stage to a crowd of around 17,000 fans, Googoosh was left shaking and speechless in the initial moments. After decades of silence, she stood on stage framed by columns evoking Persepolis, the ancient Persian ceremonial capital, and sang for thousands of people, many of whom were also in exile. 

When asked how she found her voice again after so many years, she told Newsweek: “I don’t know. The stage, the people make me sing.” She added: “When I have my people, the voice, the sound, it comes by itself, it’s not me.”  

Singing in her native tongue, a choice she’s kept throughout exile, Googoosh is fueled by her devoted audience.

She has not returned to Iran since 2000. But, earlier this year, she returned to that Toronto stage for a final bow, at Scotiabank Arena, formerly the Air Canada Centre, before formally retiring from the big stage. 

In exile, Googoosh has been outspoken about the Islamic Republic, releasing songs like “Behesht,” whose music video shows an openly gay couple, and “Dobareh,” in support of the Women Life Freedom uprising following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in Iranian police custody in 2022.

Recent crackdowns on women, artists and dissenters are a life Googoosh knows well, and one she hopes this generation can break free from. 

“I am proud of them,” she said about Iranians who have taken to the streets to protest the government. “They are fighting for their freedom, what they want to do, how they want to live, they are fighting for that, and I am proud of them,” she added. 

“I am hopeful for my people, especially women, that very soon, one day, they will have everything they want,” she says.