Adele reveals ‘I Drink Wine’ was partly inspired by conversation with James Corden

24 April, 2023

James Corden and Adele

Adele has said that the first verse of her song ‘I Drink Wine’ was partly inspired by a long conversation she had had with James Corden.

‘I Drink Wine’ appeared on her 2021 album ’30’. “How can one become so bounded by choices that somebody else makes? How come we’ve both become a version of a person we don’t even like?” she asks in its opening lines.

The revelation came during Corden’s last ever episode of the popular Carpool Karaoke segment as he prepares to step down as host of The Late Late Show. Adele said the idea for the song came to her during a six-hour conversation as they travelled home from a holiday together with their families.

She credited Corden and his family as being “so integral in looking after me” and her son Angelo after her divorce from Simon Konecki in 2019 [via BBC].

Adele
Adele. Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

However, Corden turned to her for advice when he admitted he wasn’t happy in America, which she said made her feel “unsafe”.

“You seemed down. You didn’t feel strong,” she said. She then sent the first verse of ‘I Drink Wine’ to him a few weeks later.

“It [described] everything I was feeling that day,” Corden said. “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 greatest privilege from a conversation so honest between two friends. That you could create such a thing, it just blows my mind.”

Corden’s final episodes at the helm of The Late Late Show are airing this week. Elsewhere in the segment of Carpool Karaoke, he said that “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, people that we miss – it’s time to go home.”

“I know,” replied an emotional Adele. “I’m just not ready to come back yet otherwise I would come back with you.”

They are also shown in the clip singing along to tracks including Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’ and the Barbra Streisand classic ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’. At the beginning, Adele gets Corden up for work by crashing cymbals above his head, and then offers to drive him to work.

In a farewell interview with Variety, Corden discussed what Adele’s surprise Carpool Karaoke session had meant to him.

“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 said.

“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.”

Harry Styles and Will Ferrell will be among the guests for Corden’s final episode on Thursday (April 27).

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