Thanks to Adele, James Corden had the best final “Carpool Karaoke” possible. But be warned: it’s super emotional. As the Late Late host approaches the last episode of his eight-year run on CBS, his Grammy-winning best friend and frequent guest surprised him with an unplanned final installment of his beloved segment, getting teary-eyed as the two reflected on their lives, careers and longtime friendship.
The Monday (April 24) YouTube video begins with Adele showing up uninvited to Corden’s house, waking him up in the morning with a loud cymbal crash. “Last week of shows, I’m going to drive you to work!” the singer told her pal, still half asleep.
Once inside the car, the pair proceeded to jam out to some of Adele’s biggest hits, from “Rolling in the Deep” to “Love Is a Game,” while Corden rode shotgun. As they drove, the late night star recalled how “everyone on planet Earth said no” to the now hugely popular Carpool Karaoke bit when he first introduced it on his show in 2015.
“Then suddenly, Mariah Carey said yes,” he recalled, later adding: “Stevie Wonder changed it a lot because when he did it, other artists were like, ‘Well if Stevie Wonder’s done it, I’ll do it.’”
The mood turned heavy, though, when Adele’s “I Drink Wine” came up on their karaoke playlist. Nearly a year and a half after its release, the musician revealed that the song was partly inspired by an emotional conversation she and Corden had while driving home from a joint family vacation.
During the car ride, Corden had confessed to her that he was feeling overwhelmed by “work stuff and the internet, and all those things,” a six-hour conversation that later inspired the lyrics in “I Drink Wine.” “It was everything I was feeling that day,” he gushed to Adele about the song. “I was floored by how you’d managed to take everything that I was feeling about myself and life and just put it in a verse.”
“It was the first year that I felt like I had to hold myself accountable for just being an adult,” Adele recalled through tears, Corden getting choked up next to her. “The year before, I left Simon [Konecki] and stuff like that. But you and Jules and the kids were so integral in looking after me.”
“You’re my best friend in the whole world,” she told him upon arriving to the CBS studios. “I’m going to miss you so much.”
Corden, who also recently had BLACKPINK and Diddy on as two of his last ever Carpool Karaoke guests, opened up afterward about how much Adele’s surprise meant to him in a goodbye interview with Variety.
“The fact that she came and did that for me. The fact that it was her idea to say, ‘well, why don’t I drive him to work?’ It’s really special,” he told the publication. “Because what you’re actually watching is two friends who moved to Los Angeles, I think a week apart. And one of them is going home and one of them is staying. That’s hugely emotional. It just so happens that one of them is the biggest singer in the world.”
Watch Adele jam out with James Corden on the last ever Carpool Karaoke above.
