In three days, James Corden’s time on The Late Late Show will officially come to an end. That means no more “Crosswalk the Musical,” no more “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts,” and most notably, no more “Carpool Karaoke.” For the last-ever singing segment, Adele picked the host up bright and early for an emotional final drive to the CBS lot — and maybe the real Carpool Karaoke was the friends we made along the way.
Corden and Adele began their ride with the obvious classic “Rolling in the Deep,” which was actually the closing song on their first drive together back in 2016. That episode notably featured the moment the singer ran through Nicki Minaj’s verse in “Monster” and elevated the viral potential of Carpool Karaoke to new heights. This time around, she covered Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” but only after insisting that she likely won’t round out her EGOT with a Tony Award because she can’t stand musicals.
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“I don’t think I’ve ever said how much I fucking hate musicals,” Adele admitted to one of the biggest grown theatre kids on the planet. “I just don’t need to hear everything in fucking song all the time. I also think the EGO suits me better.”
The rest of the setlist featured songs like “Hometown Glory,” “Love is a Game,” and “I Drink Wine,” which Adele wrote following an emotional six-hour-long conversation with Corden. “It was the first year that I felt like I had to hold myself accountable for just being an adult, whereas the year before that, I left Simon and stuff like that,” she started, recalling the trip back from their joint-family vacation where Corden revealed he wasn’t holding up too well, either. “But you and Jules and the kids were so integral in looking after me.”
She added: “It got me thinking, I felt so unsafe with you feeling unsafe because you’ve always been, since I was like 21, you’ve always been like that. And then I went to the studio a couple of weeks later, and I wrote this. I remember I sang it into my phone and I sent it to you. And I do remember you saying, ‘That’s exactly how I was feeling.’”
So even when Corden returns to England, they’ll both have a part of each other in the music. In a teary-eyed exchange, Adele promised that if she felt ready for it, she would be moving back home, too, just to keep her “best friend in the whole world” close by. “Our friendship and our family’s friendship has absolutely nothing to do with distance and time,” Corden added, joking a second later that they would be seeing each other the next day, anyway.
“I’ll miss everything. I think I underestimated how many friends I’d make doing this, and it’s like a family,” Corden said from the passenger seat. “So more than anything, I will just miss going into work with my friends every day. And I’m really gonna miss Los Angeles. I love it here. It’s been a brilliant adventure. But I’m just so certain that it’s time for us as a family, with people getting older and people that we miss, it’s time to go home.”
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