Adele has divulged a key inspiration behind her beloved track I Drink Wine – turns out the first verse was based on a conversation she had with James Corden.
In an emotional Carpool Karaoke episode, they recounted their talk, which had taken place over six hours on a journey home from a holiday with their families. James had confided in Adele that he wasn’t happy in America, and she 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.”
“I felt so unsafe with you feeling unsafe,” Adele said. “I went to the studio a couple weeks later, and I wrote this, and I remember I sang it into my phone and I sent it to you. And I remember you saying: ‘That’s exactly how I was feeling.’”
While the track more widely covers the aftermath of Adele's split from her husband Simon Konecki, James’ worries also made its way into her opening verse of I Drink Wine: “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?”
The duo have helped each other through some difficult times, clearly, with Adele describing how “integral” the Corden family was in helping her as she navigated her break up.
“You and Jules and the kids were so integral in looking after me,” she revealed. “You used to do it with humour as well, you used to be like: ‘Good luck with that one!’ in any sort of thing I was pursuing and stuff like that.”
Adele’s surprise appearance on Carpool Karaoke tied in with James Corden’s final segment of the popular series, as he prepares to move back to the UK.
He recently opened up in an interview with Variety, describing what this meant to him: “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.”
Friendship goals?