One Direction are history.
That was the message Harry Styles was seeking to telegraph during an outing in James Corden’s miked-up SUV for his first Carpool Karaoke as a solo recording artist.
Corden began the clip, screened last night on The Late Late Show, by alluding to an earlier journey in the famous SUV by Styles as part of One Direction.
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“Last time we did this you were not alone in the car, and now you are,” said Corden mischievously.
“That’s right,” replied Styles, dressed in a flamboyant, floral short-sleeved shirt, and pointing to the back seat. “I was back-middle.”
“How do you feel now?” asked Corden.
“I feel like I have more control over…the buttons,” deadpanned Styles.
After singing “Sign of the Times,” the first single from Styles’ new solo album—accurately described by The New York Times as “steeped in the singer-songwriter music of the late 1960s and 1970s”—the two went into the first of many hysterics after Styles said that when he performed it on stage, the song made him cry, “in a cool way.”
They then sang another potential hit from the album, the love song, “Sweet Creature,” before discussion turned to Styles’ fashion plate qualities, and his ability to make “anything” look cool.
Pointing to the floral shirt he was sporting, Corden said, “If I was wearing that shirt, I would just look like I was on my way to a barbecue.”
To test Corden’s theory out, the two swapped shirts.
“I look like I should be at a Miami Vice convention,” cracked Corden.
In a series of cuts, the two were then seen trying on the same outfits including a skimpy gold lame T-shirt, a knit sweater, and a bondage-style black mesh T-shirt.
The outfits worked a bit better on Styles than Corden.
The highlight of the clip, however, was either Corden and Styles duetting Styles’ go-to karaoke choice, “Endless Love” (with Styles as Lionel Richie and Corden as Diana Ross) or Styles ironically mocking his own acting chops by joking that he makes himself cry on-screen by pouring a bottle of water in his eye, and rehearsing lines from Titanic and Notting Hill, including Julia Roberts’ line to Hugh Grant, “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”
Water bottles all round.
