In 1970, Iranian pop icon Googoosh recorded a powerful single: Respect – Aretha Franklin’s anthem, sung in English, straight out of Tehran.

Born in 1950 in Tehran, Googoosh became the voice and face of an entire generation in the ’70s. With her music, her style, and her presence, she shaped Iranian pop like few others. The fact that she chose Aretha’s Respect – a song that had already become a voice for women and a feminist anthem – makes this recording especially significant.

Only a few years later, after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, came the great silence: Googoosh, like all other singers, was banned from performing, and her music was outlawed. For more than 20 years she lived in seclusion in Iran, while her songs continued to be listened to secretly in the underground.

Today she is regarded as a legend, living in California – and her version of Respect remains a powerful document of that brief period when Iranian pop could still breathe freely.