Celebrities singing along to the car radio sounds like unlikely TV gold, but when Michelle Obama said she would take part in James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke it was the ultimate seal of approval for what has become a global viral phenomenon.
The US first lady will be the latest big name to appear in the front seat alongside Corden in the most popular slot of his CBS talkshow.
Adele’s appearance at the beginning of this year, belting her way through her hits and even the Spice Girls’ Wannabe and a Nicky Minaj rap, has been watched by more than 110 million people online, around 100 times the number who watch Corden’s Late, Late Show.
Corden has persuaded everyone from Justin Bieber and Jennifer Lopez to George Clooney and Jennifer Hudson to take part in the segment, which critics have described as the must-see moment of late-night US TV.
But it is one of the luxuries of the YouTube era that you don’t have to stay up late to watch it. Corden’s friend and producer, fellow Brit Ben Winston, has described it as a “gateway drug” into the rest of the show.
The idea for Carpool Karaoke, now being made into a standalone series, dates back to the 2011 edition of Comic Relief when Corden did a similar thing alongside George Michael. Three years later, he did it in a BBC1 road trip documentary with Take That frontman Gary Barlow.
The format was resurrected in the first week of Corden’s CBS show, in March last year, when Mariah Carey was going to be away from Los Angeles at the time of recording, so they filmed her in a car instead. Some 25m YouTube views later, a format was born.
Its success, and the popularity of Jimmy Fallon’s Lip Sync Battle on NBC’s The Tonight Show, has prompted rival broadcasters to launch a hunt for their own viral hits. The BBC is hopeful that a new 10pm show being developed for BBC2 will have something of the Saturday Night Live about it, although how it will fare on UK budgets – a fraction of those in the US – remains to be seen.
Corden attributed the skit’s success to freeing up celebrities from their entourage and giving them the legroom to be themselves. Or, at least, appear to be.
“You’re dealing with people like Justin Bieber or Stevie Wonder or Mariah Carey … who, for a very long time, have never really been on their own,” he has said. “We shoot them for about 40 minutes and they’re completely on their own. It’s me and them and fixed cameras and that’s it. I think they find that very liberating and there’s a joy in that I’m very proud of.”
Graham Stuart, the long-time business partner of Graham Norton and executive producer of his BBC1 show, said: “It’s an incredibly clever piece of television, based on principles that we have worked with, that you take a famous person out of context and get them to do stuff and people love it.
“James Corden can sing and, although it’s a spoof, the performances are really good. When you crank up the fame – with the first lady or the world’s biggest pop stars – a small idea becomes a giant idea and you’ve got yourself a major item.”
If there is a potential downside it is that the slot becomes so successful that it overshadows the rest of the show.
But if they have created a monster, then CBS will ensure it is a money-making one, bringing McDonald’s and Coca-Cola on board as sponsors (in a recent episode Corden and guest Selena Gomez stopped at a McDonald’s drive through and ordered a Coke).
Wayne Garvie, chief creative officer for international production at Sony Pictures Television, said: “What I like about it – and it’s the same with Jimmy Fallon – is that it just makes you feel happy and you have a laugh. There’s not enough TV at the moment that makes you feel like that.
“It’s a very brilliant simple idea, driven by James Corden’s electric personality. It feels like a party that you want to be a part of – you want to be in that car with Corden – as opposed to looking at rich people having a good time. That’s a very subtle thing.”
But would it work in the UK? Garvie’s not so sure.
“They are shooting in Hollywood which is essentially an entertainment business and that’s where most of the people are,” he said. “They had Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt [on Lip Sync Battle]. In Britain it would be some bloke off Big Brother and an Apprentice contestant.”
