Jamming in the car
Carpool Karaoke goes from a segment on Late Late Show to a weekly series.
“HOW many people have watched the video?”
James Corden is thumbing through texts on his cellphone inside his Late Late Show office at CBS Television Studios in Los Angeles.
It’s the day after the latest Carpool Karaoke segment – featuring the vehicular vocals of R&B star Usher – has aired, and Corden wants to know whether executive producer Ben Winston, seated next to him, has the latest intel on the video’s viral status.
“I haven’t heard back,” Winston, also checking his phone, says to Corden. “On YouTube, it slows down. So it’s usually double the amount – on the first day, it will be either double or triple the amount of showings. It says 2.3 million. So it’s probably around 4 million.”
“It’s still No.1,” Corden replies, verifying its ranking on YouTube. (By the time this article went to press, the number would grow to more than 11 million.)
In the three years since he took over as host of the CBS late-night talk show, the British comedian has made riding in cars with stars Must Search-and-Click TV.
The segment, in which Corden helms the wheel as he sings along with some of music’s most popular artists, has featured everyone from Adele and Stevie Wonder to Justin Bieber and Britney Spears – and has emerged as a venue for celebs to jam out like no one is watching (except millions of people).
And now Apple is hoping the segment’s viral heft will help bolster its subscription service, Apple Music, in its original programming ambitions as the company looks to strengthen its presence in entertainment.
Carpool Karaoke: The Series ,a supersized digital adaption of the Late Late Show bit, made its debut on Apple Music last week.
“They are at the forefront of music,” Corden says. “So a musicbased show with all these different people – it just seemed like Apple Music would be the right partners for us.”
When, not if, Apple would dive into the original programming space and challenge streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon has long been a question industry insiders have wondered.
The company announced this year its plan to more earnestly join the original programming space to help distinguish Apple Music from such rivals as Spotify and Tidal.
“For Apple Music, Carpool is perfect,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and service.
“It’s a natural extension to the customers and subscribers that we do have and keeping them coming to Apple Music even more often for more things. For other folks who may not have tried it, this may be the thing to get them to try it out.”
But if anyone can make bold claims, it may be Apple, which has more than US$250bil (RM1 trillion) in cash.
“Netflix proves one thing: If you have great technology and are willing to outspend your peers, you can have access to the best content,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research.
The conception of Carpool Karaoke: The Series begun when Corden received a call from music producer Jimmy Iovine, who spearheaded the launch of Apple’s music streaming service.
It was 2015 and Iovine had just watched the Carpool Karaoke segment with Wonder (a video that has since notched more than 35 million views on YouTube.).
“He said, ‘I want you to come to Malibu and have dinner with me’,” Corden says. “We sat down on the beach and had this long chat. The great thing about Jimmy is nothing’s impossible. We weren’t even talking that night about making a show for Apple or anything. But he gave me, and us, a real confidence in what we were doing.”
Corden and Winston couldn’t quite pinpoint when the idea to expand the segment into a series began to germinate. But it started to take shape, they say, largely because so many artistes were asking to be a part of it – and video views showed an appetite for more.
“We’ve had to implement what we consider our sort of rules of when we do it on our show,” Corden says. “We could probably do it every week, with the amount of people that call in and say that they’d love to do it. But we wanted to keep it special and keep it in that sort of rarefied air that it’s occupied.”
Non-music stars
Adding non-music stars felt like a way it could stand alongside – and apart – from the flagship segment without diluting its charm, Winston says.
“We felt that doing it with other people – sports stars, movie stars, politicians – could be really interesting, because, sure, it’s really great seeing people sing their hits, but what’s great about the setting is the intimacy you get from having a conversation in a car with no crew around you. And we felt opening that up to more people would be fun.”
In exploring it as a standalone series, Corden knew he couldn’t host the show – given his late-night duties.
It’s an absence hard to overlook considering he is synonymous with the brand and has perfected the art of getting celebs to let down their guard. Corden thought a different host every week would keep viewers interested.
“I wasn’t sure about the idea, because we were talking to different broadcasters and cable networks, and I think their feeling was ‘Who are we hanging this series around?’” Winston says.
While Corden is still in the proverbial driver’s seat – making the occasional appearance and serving as host in the premiere and finale – the show’s celebrity mash-ups take centre stage.
There will be 20 episodes, with pairings such as Alicia Keys and John Legend, Joe Jonas and Camila Cabello, Ariana Grande and Seth MacFarlane, Billy Eichner and Metallica, Shakira and Trevor Noah – yes, even other late-night talk show hosts are eager to belt it out.
“We wanted to say from the beginning, ‘This is not the Carpool Karaoke that you see on The Late Late Show.” This series goes to a different place,” says showrunner Eric Pankowski.
Sometimes they arrive to that different place by helicopter – as seen in the premiere with Will Smith. Sometimes the different place comes courtesy of having Metallica sing Rihanna’s Diamonds. Sometimes the different place is literal – like taking the show to the streets of Barcelona, Spain for the Shakira-Noah episode.
Corden concludes by saying: “There’s something so ridiculously simple about watching celebrities sing their favourite songs in the very same scenario we all sing them on our way to work. Look, I’m constantly shocked by the success of it.”