Shervin Hajipour
Shervin Hajipour built his best-known song from other people's words: tweets by Iranians naming their reasons, each one beginning with ‘barâyeh’, for. He filmed it in one room with a still camera and let the words carry it. Within two days it had passed forty million views on Instagram; then he was detained and made to take it down. In 2023 it received the first Grammy ever given for Best Song for Social Change.
Before Baraye there was a talent-show audition: in 2019 he sang Maybe Paradise on the New Era program and released it as his first single - a young songwriter from Babolsar who had been posting covers online until his own songs took over. What came after Baraye is part of the song's meaning now. Time named him one of the hundred most influential people of 2023, and in March 2024 an Iranian court sentenced him to three years and eight months in prison for the song itself.
