Red Stars tells the story of seven singers; Èdita P'ekha, Iosif Kobzon, Lev Leshchenko, Sofiia Rotaru, Valerii Leont'ev, Alla Pugacheva, and Irina Ponarovskaia. Their songs, broadcast on Soviet radio every day for decades and sometimes selling hundreds of millions of copies, tell the story of Soviet popular culture since the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Collectively the seven embody the efforts of a generation to fashion a new worldview.

David MacFadyen delves into influential and widely disseminated songs that had a profound social significance in the Soviet Union. He discusses each singer's life, showing what it was that made them famous while placing the differences in their careers and fame in the context of Soviet culture as a whole.