Celebrity Travel Watch: Chris de Burgh in Iran

Chris who? You probably know his syrupy song “The Lady in Red.” (Video below.) It was huge in the mid-‘80s. Turns out the British singer is still huge in Iran, where, for almost three decades, most Western music has been forbidden by the ruling Shiite Muslim clergy. De Burgh’s songs circulated on illegally copied tapes there, and he became rock-star popular. So much so that, in an apparent lifting of the Western music ban, de Burgh recently became the first Western pop musician to visit Iran since the 1979 revolution.

The Washington Post’s Thomas Erdbrink covered de Burgh’s triumphant visit, complete with fawning fans and ritual pop star stage banter, albeit with a novel delivery. De Burgh spoke a bit in Farsi.

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