Adele Cries In Final Carpool Karaoke About James Corden Inspiring “I Drink Wine” Lyrics

Adele’s 2021 song “I Drink Wine,” from her self-proclaimed “divorce” album 30, got fans in their feels (and wine cabinets), but those emotions were actually brought on by a surprising famous friend. In James Corden’s final Carpool Karaoke segment, Adele cried while revealing that the first verse of “I Drink Wine” was inspired by the 44-year-old comedian, calling it “some of my best writing that I’ve ever done, even if I do say so myself.”

Before belting “I Drink Wine,” Adele reflected on a “six-hour converation” they had while driving home from a joint family vacation in January 2020. “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,” she said, referring to her 2019 divorce from Simon Konecki, with whom she shares 10-year-old son Angelo. Adele revealed Corden and his family were “so integral” in her and Angelo’s well-being after the split, adding that she was alarmed when Corden admitted to not feeling strong.

“I remember I said to you on the way home, ‘What’s wrong?’ You just seemed down and you let it all out to me,” Adele, 34, recalled. “It got me thinking, I felt so unsafe with you feeling unsafe, because you’ve always been that [person]... you have, since I was 21, you’ve always been like that. And then I went to the studio a couple weeks later and I wrote this verse, and I sang it into my phone and sent it to you, and I do remember you saying, ‘That’s exactly how I was feeling.’”

“It was everything that I was feeling that day,” Corden concurred. “I was floored by how you managed to take everything that I was feeling about myself and life and just put it in a verse. It’s the greatest privilege, from a conversation so just honest between two friends, that you create such a thing that blows my mind.” Now, Adele says she thinks of Corden “every time I sing this song in Vegas,” which will be a lot given how she just extended her Weekends With Adele residency.

The first verse of “I Drink Wine” goes:

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?

We’re in love with the world, but the world just wants to bring us down

By putting ideas in our heads that corrupt our hearts somehow

When I was a child, every single thing could blow my mind

Soaking it all up for fun, but now I only soak up wine

They say to play hard, you work hard, find balance in the sacrifice

And yet I don’t know anybody who’s truly satisfied

Adele and Corden have been close friends since before either of them even became mega-famous in their own rights, dating back to the early 2010s. Their first Carpool Karaoke segment in January 2016, filmed in their native Great Britain, broke a late-night viral video record, partly due to Adele’s epic cover of Nicki Minaj’s “Monster” rap.

After a trip to Broadway to belt out Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Rain On My Parade” from Funny Girl, the pair shared one last tearful exchange as the last-ever Carpool Karaoke came to an end, singing Adele’s “Hometown Glory” as a nod to Corden moving back to their shared hometown of London. “It’s blown my mind that you’ve done this for me,” he told her. “We’ve had some of the best times here, and our friendship and our family’s friendship has nothing to do with distance and time.” Adele responded by calling him “one of my best friends in the world” and admitting, “I’m just not ready to come back yet, otherwise I would come back with you.”