Have you ever heard of Googoosh?  Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Until yesterday, I had never heard of Googoosh either, but today my life is all the better for it.

So what IS a Googoosh, you’re wondering? Or rather WHO is Googoosh? This was the question I asked myself when I was poking around the Finders Keepers website and was struck by the above, well, very striking, album cover.

Here’s what Finders Keepers had to say about their Googoosh collection:

The East’s best kept secret? Despite being a national treasure to generations of free-thinking Iranians and one of the most well-known and loved songbirds from the East, Faegheh Atashin (most famously known as Googoosh or Gougoush) is ironically also the performer of some of the rarest unheard pop music in the world.

Originally pressed on the diminishing vinyl format in the mid-1970s her songs and performances were banned after the Iranian revolution of 1979 resulting in her records, and millions of others, being forbidden, hidden and destroyed. Preserved in some part via the rise of global compact cassette culture in the 1980s some of Googoosh’s most famous songs have become anthemic amongst international Iranian communities whilst in darker contrast dozens of 45 b-sides and commercially stunted album tracks remain as distant and nonexistent memories in the mind of the most devout fans and fastidious vinyl librarians.

Finders Keepers’ first Googoosh release focuses on a handful of these lesser-spotted tracks - the ones that didn’t get away. Herein many will find the singer at her beguiling best with an urgency and yearning in her voice that is arguably unrivalled by so many contenders under the often disposable femme-pop umbrella. Mid-tempo pop peons with pulsating rhythm sections awash with expertly orchestrated strings (akin to that of some of the most intense Italian or French film composers) provide the backdrop for unrequited love songs revealing poetic premonitions of impeding cultural heartbreak. Other carefully selected tracks take cues from Googoosh’s most unlikely influences, such as jazz, bossa and early disco, unconsciously inducing political paranoia from the era’s imminent anti-pop restrictive regime. Combining inspiration from a deep-rooted history of Persian poetic verse and indelible Arabic songcraft these lost tracks, from the artist known amongst Farsi speaking fans throughout the world as ‘Iran’s Daughter,’ have most certainly, finally earned a place in the hearts of “outernational” music lovers like yourself.

If you’re anything like me, the above description has you salivating to hear more. Luckily, living as we do, in the Age of Consumer Enlightenment, I had but to type ‘Googoosh’ into Google to have dozens upon dozens of vintage Googoosh performances piped directly into my own home.

Rare no more, I suppose. Google ‘Googoosh’ for yourself. Her music lives up to the advanced hype! She’s got her own uniquely Googooshian thing going on for sure, but for sake of pop culture shorthand, imagine a combination of Cher (her campy, over the top conviction makes her a soul sister of our pop icon), Histoire de Melody Nelson-style orchestral pop and a hefty dollop of disco/funk with a decidedly Eastern flavor. Count me in!

Here’s the first thing I randomly found, “Talaagh,” and it’s a great place to start (certainly worked for me!):
 

 
Faegheh Atashin was born in 1950 in Tehran. Primarily known as a singer in Iran, she also starred in movies, including the top grossing Iranian film of all time, Dar Emtedade Shab, in 1977. According to most accounts in English, Googoosh seems to be the undisputed icon of female singers from that part of the world and began performing onstage at the tender age of just three. In the mid-1970s, before the fall of the Shah, she was at the height of her fame.

Googoosh stayed in Iran for over two decades after the Islamist revolution banned female singers, but after 2000 moved to the West (she’s rumored to live in Beverly Hills) and began to perform again to sold-out audiences around the world. 99% of the people reading this, myself included until yesterday, will never have heard of her, but Googoosh is selling out prestigious venues like Wembley Arena, the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, and the Royal Albert Hall where she performed last month.
 

 
More Googoosh after the jump…
 

 
Tons of more Googoosh videos here. Be sure to check out the Finders Keepers website for more gems like this.

Thanks for the tip, Jessica Espeleta of Mount Analog!