A recent edition of James Corden’s The Late Late Show opened with a nearly four-minute parody of Beyonce’s Lemonade. Lemonjames: A Visual Monologue was an elaborate spoof of the hour-long film companion to Beyonce’s latest “visual album” that premiered on April 23 on HBO and has had the Internet abuzz ever since.
Corden’s rendition was detailed down to the whispered voiceover and surrealist imagery, including a shot of Corden in a bra and panties and title cards indicating different themes. In Corden’s case, the title cards included “Monologue” and “Trump Joke” rather than Beyonce’s “Anger” and “Apathy”.
“I try to write a monologue for your night after night, even when we don’t have a show,” Corden says in voiceover. “I write a monologue but you don’t see that.”
Corden zeroed in on one of Lemonade‘s most talked-about moments, Beyonce’s reference to “Becky with the good hair”. That line has been widely interpreted as a reference to a woman that may have had a romantic relationship with Beyonce’s husband, music mogul Jay-Z.
James Corden’s recipe for Lemonade includes lots of sugar.
In Corden’s case, the line is directed at one of his late-night TV rivals: “Does that make you laugh like Jimmy with the good hair?”
In other related news, Corden’s Carpool Karaoke segment from the show, which is also shown on The Late Late Show’s YouTube channel, has garnered a billion views.
The channel also claims the top two late night clips, thanks to his Carpool Karaoke with Adele (98 million views) and Justin Bieber (73 million views), according to data from Tubular labs.
The channel has over four million subscribers, and each of the 16 Carpool Karaoke videos to date has surpassed 10 million views on YouTube. – Reuters