Adele has recalled how a conversation with James Corden partly inspired her song I Drink Wine.
During the final instalment of The Late Late Show segment Carpool Karaoke that aired on Monday, the Hello hitmaker described the first verse of the 2021 track as “some of her best writing” and revealed that the lyrics were influenced by a candid chat she once had with the TV host.
“It was like the fourth of January 2020 and we’d been on vacation together with the kids and we were on our way home and my mood had changed and it was the first year that I felt like I had to hold myself accountable for being an adult, whereas the year before that I’d just left Simon (Konecki, ex-husband),” she said, before tearing up. “And you and (James’s wife) Jules were so integral in looking after me and (son) Angelo and you used to do it with humour as well, you used to be like, ‘Good luck with that one!’ with anything I was pursuing and you were always an adult to me.”
Adele then recounted how James didn’t seem to be his usual self during the trip.
“I remember I said to you on the way home, ‘What’s wrong?’ you just seemed down and you let it all out, you didn’t feel strong, and we had a six-hour conversation about it the whole way home,” the music superstar recounted, to which James interjected: “It was work stuff, the Internet, all those things…”
A few weeks after the conversation took place, Adele wrote about her experiences while in the studio and quickly sent the first draft to her friend.
“It was everything that I was feeling that day. 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 and it’s the greatest privilege that something from a conversation so honest, between two friends, that you created such a thing,” praised James.
I Drink Wine was included on Adele’s fourth studio album 30.
The last episode of The Late Late Show will air on 27 April.