Adele reveals how James Corden inspired I Drink Wine in emotional video

Adele popped by for the final week of James Corden's US chat show The Late Late Show for the last-ever instalment of his popular Carpool Karaoke series, offering a stirring and surprisingly-emotional farewell to the popular internet segment.

While driving James into his final week of work (he announced last year that he would be stepping down from hosting duties and returning to the UK), Adele took the time to sing the hits, while also revealing that one of the most emotional and revealing songs on 30 was actually written with James in mind.

It turns out that I Drink Wine - the six-minute, jazz influenced languid ballad that serves as one of the centrepieces of the album - was heavily inspired by a deep, six-hour conversation Adele and James shared during the start of 2020.

Apparently, every time she sings the song, she thinks about him.

Corden confessed that the conversation - which took place after the duo had returned from a holiday they'd shared with their children - had centred around certain anxieties and pressures he'd felt overwhelmed with thanks to "work stuff and the internet."

MORE: Adele's Official Charts history in full

Adele had taken it all in, of course, and had hit the studio the next day, sharing the initial demo with James, about whom the first verse of I Drink Wine is explicitly about. 

"It was everything I was feeling that day," James said, remembering hearing the song for the first time. "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."

Adele added that I Drink Wine - a song all about the pressures you feel around shedding your ego and the scary task of living up to your own responsibilities and actions - was written about one of the first times she "really had to take accountability for my actions."

"The year before, I left [ex-husband] Simon [Konecki] and stuff like that," she shared. "But you and [Corden's wife] Jules and the kids were so integral in looking after me.

"It was the first year that I felt like I had to hold myself accountable for just being an adult."

Adele is currently based stateside, thanks to her sprawling Las Vegas residency, Weekends With Adele, which is scheduled to run until this November.

I Drink Wine was originally scheduled to be released as the second single from 30, before being pulled in favour of Oh My God. The track was one of the biggest hits out of the gate from 30's release, peaking at Number 4 on the Official Singles Chart, while Oh My God ended up peaking at Number 2.

30 itself was named the biggest album of 2021, despite only being released in November of that year. It managed a total of five weeks at Number 1, and its lead single Easy On Me also topped the Official Singles Chart for a total of eight weeks - becoming Adele's longest-running UK Number 1 single in the process.