Rock band Queen, fronted by gay icon Freddie Mercury, has become the first rock act to receive an official seal of approval in Iran.
Western music is strictly censored in the Islamic republic, where homosexuality is considered a crime.
But an album of Queen's greatest hits was released in Iran on Monday.
Mercury, who died in 1991, was proud of his Iranian ancestry, and illegal bootleg albums and singles made Queen one of the most popular bands in Iran.
This is all kinds of strange. There's probably not a single band more closely identified with gay liberation than Queen, yet Freddie Mercury's Persian heritage provides an in to a society ruled by hardline conservative clerics. It also probably doesn't hurt that Queen. Fucking. Rocks.
Globalization at its finest, people. Keep ripping those bootlegs.
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