How Carpool Karaoke Became Late Night's Most Viral Segment

it's one of the most indelible bits now in late night history do you mind if we listen to some music oh I'd love to should we see what's on Theo what on the radio when we were developing the show we were really looking for something that would be exciting and different and really like just grab the bull b its horns we knew that we needed like some bits temp Poes in a way that you could hang the show on jaylo no jay walking Letterman had stupid petrick and top 10 lists Kimmel had Mean Tweets Fallon had liptin battles and thank you notes and we were like what is our thing we were very aware that no one knew who James Gordon was and we realized that if we were waiting for people to come to us

they never would we had to go to them we were just showing the writers some different things that I'd done at home and Ben and I had done a couple of sketches that were quite successful for comic relief he had this character Smithy that he played on a sitcom that he wrote called gaver Stacy hello hi is that Smithy who this and he' got in a car with George Michael and George Michael at the time had just come out of jail comic relief they need me to go in now so we had this really funny idea that bizarrely George Michael agreed to that James would pick George Michael up from jail and drive him to his meeting can I come to leave and James had put on a Wham song and they'd sung it together your I love it really

resonated with people we started to think well hold on a sec maybe cuz we can't get people to come to us maybe we go to them and maybe they drive around and they listen to their music and they sing along can I put the radio on yeah please yeah and I had just so happened that I had watched Kirby Your Enthusiasm the night before where Larry picks up a hooker on his way to baseball so that he can go in the carp Lane to get there quicker get in the car Ben said what if you were driving the biggest stars in the world and you need them to help you get to work to beat the traffic and I said and James went and he goes karaoke thank you and he walked out and slammed the door I just left I went home I was

like we got it so we had this firecracker of an idea which allowed us to go and get people to be on the show and hear their hits and have a great chat with them well then we couldn't book a soul for it carpo karaoke was a hard concept to get across to people you want me to sit in a car and then sing along to my own songs while driving with a guy that I don't really know anything about on a show that hasn't been on television yet so we spent 2 months before the show came out pitching everybody carpo karaoke and everybody said no think of anybody you like in the whole world in music if they're alive they said no I had some friends at Epic and they asked if um one of their newer

artists could come and do a showcase for us we had employed more and more people and so we decided to have a pizza night out on the balcony Loris Swanson was there and she was the head of Epic publicity at that time and was really close with Mariah Carey and James pitched her the idea I took her into my office and I played her me and George Michael singing in the car and I said this segment will be brilliant with Mariah Carey and she said well Mariah Carey does Love George Michael so if I could show her the George Michael clip then maybe she'd do it cuz she's got her greatest hits album coming out Laura said all right let me call Mariah and I think she called her right then and she

said yes in that moment it changed the trajectory of the entire show no question well I know she said yes to it without fully understanding what it was because when James got in the car with her she didn't want to sing I'm not taking today I was up all night and it's so funny she didn't even really know what the bit was her publicist has just said go on you should do this it'd be great I remember thinking no one's told Mariah Carey what this is because I can remember you got in the car and said I'm not singing today and I was like well because I okay that is a big part of it got it I just kept just trying to just wear her down with a sort of youthful exuberance I know you're I mean it's a new car cuz I don't know how to

change the radio station but we can we got such a chill great version of Mariah it wasn't like destined to go viral you know she just was having some fun what do you remember about that day I remember having fun with you in car once she was in the car and those hits play and she's singing along to them there's something sort of irresistible and joyful about it and that's James Gordon's ability to extract the best of people when there sitting together in that car you have to remember we are a show that no one knows who we are and within 4 days that Mari Carey clip had 14 million hits and 14 million hits for a brand new show like ours is Sensational and suddenly we were like oh

we could be on to something here and immediately became clear why it was special you never get to hear your favorite artists singing their big hit songs and it was just so relatable cuz we all sing Mariah Carey in our cars and so to see Mariah singing her own song songs in the car was just like immediately incredible I don't think any of us would have been here if you hadn't said yes to carpo karaoke before this show we obviously are like forever grateful and loyal to Mariah for doing this carpal karaoke might sound like a bit of a harrowing thing for your brand new host to do driving around La of all places and driving around incredibly famous people all around town not really

knowing where they're going that seems crazy that was a good deed that was cool and it was very difficult for people to kind of wrap their head around it but once people saw what it was people were clamoring to do it the sooner you realize that you're a d the reason why it really took off was because suddenly you were away from cameras you were away from publicists you away from managers makeup artists security you away from everybody it was just James and that person in a car isolated so we would be getting these unbelievable interviews with these Mega stars that You' never usually see being as relaxed and easygoing as that but also singing a minute of all their greatest hits what

was the carple that surprised you most cuz there's been some bloody brilliant ones and a few ones obviously Stevie Wonder changed it a lot because I think when he did it other artists were like icons Legend well if Stevie W has done it I'll do it you know are you sure you're okay to drive because this is making me feel a bit uneasy my hands are on when Stevie Wonder did carpool Stevie Wonder's greatest hits suddenly was in the top 10 on iTunes and it hadn't been on a chart in decades then I think that was an eyeopener for the industry itself to say like oh this is a way that uh we can really showcase our artist you don't think there's any of your music in this car just saying well then you don't know me at all and suddenly

we had a bit that was a behemoth and it became bigger than or any bit in the history of Lake night and then we got Justin Bieber that was the other big one I came as soon as I could you are a is one of our only ones that I've done multiple car pools with and so we've had the privilege of seeing different moments of him during his career do you see what we're doing right now do you see what we're doing right now James really brought out the side of him you had never seen before you definitely had never seen Justin Bieber like doing a Rubik's Cube and it's so exciting for a fan to see their favorite artist singing their favorite songs I Love You The Pinnacle moment was Adele hello oh

thanks for this the biggest artist in the world at that moment she obviously had this amazing relationship with James I can't work out if I should wear a wigwig or have a weave I mean what I like is that you're coming to me for this advice and it was really interesting the ratings that we were getting on it 65 70 million they were more than the Grammys SNL it more viewers than anything our one because it broke all of those records I think seeing how many people watch that Ma artists like Bruno and Gaga and people like that go oh hang on a minute yeah absolutely I'll do this and I think the other big highlight was being requested by the White House to fly to Washington and do one with Michelle

Obama I hear you're here for a 145 tour and uh have more time on my hands so you want to go for a spin they had a charity they wanted to promote we were like this is unbelievable is she really going to do this it was just an incredible feat that this all came together I think we like didn't tell James about it until like that week cuz we were like there's no way this is going to happen we would kind of joke like yeah right like when we're in Washington next week like we going through the motions that none of us really believed that it was really going to happen fast forward you're flying overnight with your best mate James to go into the White House God I remember like FaceTiming my mom from

there just going I can't believe I'm in the White House and Michelle Obama's about to sing in a car a highlight it in all of our lives like it's just such a special moment for all of us this was a joy and I hope you like the tour God if anyone told me that like Harville karaoke would like be the significant in my life yes it is a thing that people say to me you know like oh we singing in the G you like when I went to the DMV to get my license which I didn't have for the first two years even the guy doing like my test was like are we singing a song and I was like I'll sing whatever you want if you just sign this and not tell anyone I haven't had this for two years but it had a huge impact on the

music industry on our show on James's career on all of us really it has six seasons of a spin-off show of it has probably over a billion views in itself it's lovely to see the impact they have online cuz like for Paul McCartney it was so wild to watch in the- moments oh thank you so much for this to help the Paul McCartney carpool which I felt was special on the day that we shot it I felt that we might have captured something good it was also incredible that Paul hadn't been back to Liverpool for our cameras and for James to get to experience that with Paul like for the first time was just such an incredible thing to capture and you said this is going to be a trip I must say right so

it's such a special CB because he goes beyond a CBO like again it's like a piece of History I had a dream in the 60s where my mom who died came to me in the dream and was reassuring me saying it's going to be okay just let it be that's the most beautiful story I've ever heard I think we made something that was bigger than the show it was the culmination of what that bit could have achieve I can remember my granddad who's a musician and my dad sitting me down and saying we're going to play you the best song you've ever heard and I remember them playing me that really if my granddad was here right now he'd get an absolute kick out of this he is we were all cheering up in the fall van like as James talked about his

grandfather and you know we're in Paul's house the acoustic chamber everything sounds better in the I think it's pretty close to perfect yeah we could never have expected it to be what it was and we still love making them you know we still love making them and I hope maybe we can continue making them even after the show's done I don't know last ever carple with the gang Glenn our director Tommy jar editor Jason C cameras Lauren producer headwriter Last ever Carle where's the car there's the car and this is what we are looking at we're going to miss it gang we're going to miss it wav goodbye