2016 repress; originally released in 2011. Googoosh collects some of the rarest records from the East's best-kept secret songbird, Googoosh, including forgotten B-sides and mythical LP tracks. Despite her reputation as one of the most legendary Iranian pop stars, Faegheh Atashin aka Googoosh is also the performer of some of the rarest heart-melting pop music in the world, originally pressed on the diminishing vinyl format. Her 1970s songs and performances were banned after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, resulting in her records being forbidden, hidden, and destroyed. Some of Googoosh's most famous songs have since become anthemic among global Iranian communities, but in a darker contrast, dozens of 45 B-sides and album tracks remain only as distant and nonexistent memories in the minds of the most devout fans and fastidious vinyl librarians. Googoosh focuses on a handful of these lesser-spotted tracks - the ones that didn't get away. Googoosh's voice conveys an urgency and yearning that is arguably unrivalled under the often-disposable femme-pop umbrella. Mid-tempo pulsating pop paeans awash with expertly orchestrated strings (akin to those of some of the most intense European film composers) provide the backdrop for songs of unrequited love and poetic premonitions of impeding cultural heartbreak. Other tracks combine unlikely jazz, bossa, and early disco influences, which inadvertently incited political paranoia from the era's brooding anti-pop regime. Boasting deep roots in the history of Persian poetic verse and indelible Arabic songcraft, these lost tracks from the artist known among Farsi-speaking fans as Iran's Daughter have most certainly earned a place in the hearts of all outer national music lovers.
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