Video premiere: Mara Connor, ‘No Fun’

Kevin Bronson on October 16th, 2018

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L.A. native Mara Connor has been honing her songwriting since her days at Vassar College, and “No Fun” is the heart-melting introduction to her debut album, arriving in 2019. “No Fun” is the title track, strings-swept and swoon-worthy, a confessional that’s equal parts girl-group pop and ’70s AM radio finery, her buttery voice somewhere between Allie Crow Buckley and Lana Del Rey.

It was recorded to tape at the Bomb Shelter in Nashville and produced by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Margo Price), part of an album that will feature duets with Langhorne Slim and Joseph Arthur. While writing “No Fun,” Connor says, she was listening to George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and drawing inspiration from the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, as well as retro production styles.

“You know it’s no fun / when I’m looking in your eyes / but you’re singing for someone else,” Connor sings, casting herself as the awkward outsider with the crush. That helpless feeling is conveyed brilliantly in the video directed by the duo Similar But Different (Charlotte Fassler and Dani Girdwood) and shot by Christopher Ripley. Filmed at several locations in the San Fernando Valley, Connor hangs with her stylish friends … at a house party, a bowling outing, a pool party and skateboarding (the fashions in the latter scene are courtesy of Aza Ziegler’s Calle Del Mar line).

In the end, though, Connor takes the plunge, comfortable in the notion that she alone charts her path to contentment. She’ll even get there in a vintage Malibu convertible.

And that sounds good to us.

||| Watch: The video for “No Fun”