Wow, James Corden. Wow. Just this summer, you were saying you would do no more than one Carpool Karaoke segment every three weeks. What were your exact words? Something about being “very, very careful that we don’t overdo it”?
Watch: Bruno Mars sings “Uptown Funk” on Carpool Karaoke
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.
And yet here we are, mere days after watching Madonna car-twerk to “Bitch I’m Madonna,” and Bruno Mars is crooning “Uptown Funk” from the front seat of Corden’s car and telling us all about his tour rider. (Wet wipes and wine are required in his dressing room, FYI.)
As Carpool Karaoke segments go, this one is, you know, fine. Mars is as affable and charming as ever. He sings smoothly, chair-dances enthusiastically, and graciously tolerates Corden’s slightly overlong bit about silk shirts and fancy hats, which is really as much as anyone can expect from a Carpool Karaoke guest. He is no Adele rapping Nicki Minaj or Madonna casually spilling tea, but he’s likable and fun to watch, easily at the level of a Selena Gomez doing product placement.
But y’all, we need to space these joys out. It’s been a long and dark 2016, and we’re about to head into a long and dark 2017 — we cannot afford to lose the simple pleasure of watching celebrities engage in road trip sing-alongs. Carpool Karaoke is overexposed enough as it is. If Corden does too many of these two-in-a-row deals, it’ll ruin the Carpool Karaoke conceit, and then where will we be? We’ll be stuck with Jimmy Fallon’s weird party game where celebrities pour ice down each other’s pants, that’s where, and that’s less than ideal, to say the least.
So please, James Corden, I’m begging you, for all our sakes: Stick to your once-every-three-weeks rule.
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