Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa have appeared in Apple TV’s A Carpool Karaoke Christmas.
The festive special aired last night (December 15), with an hour-long instalment of the show put out on Apple’s platforms in a surprise release.
Taking over from James Corden, Zane Lowe took on the role of guest driver and part-time backing singer as he shuttled the three artists around Missouri, Tokyo and Los Angeles, with Roan and Lipa covering Christmas classics as well as their own hits.
The ‘Good Luck, Babe’ singer took on Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ – which she recently performed alongside Sabrina Carpenter on A Nonsense Christmas With Sabrina Carpenter -while Lipa tackled the Ronettes’ ‘Sleigh Ride’.
Gaga, true to form, elected to sing an original, joking to Lowe she prefers “a song that the whole family can get together and sing,” before breaking into 2008’s ‘Christmas Tree, in which she sings: “Underneath the mistletoe, everybody knows we will take off our clothes.”
Throughout her segment, Gaga discussed her “crazy” collaboration with Bruno Mars and her upcoming album, ‘LG7’. After showing a clip of her late grandmother singing ‘Highway to Hell’, Lowe also surprised her and made a pit-stop to pick up AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, prompting the ‘Born This Way’ singer to recall being an extra in one of their videos when she was a teenager.
Lipa also reflected on her teenage years while out Christmas shopping with Lowe in Tokyo, telling him she once got up on stage at a Katy Perry gig to perform a Whitney Houston cover alongside other audience members. “I was like, ‘I want to be on that stage,’” she said. “I want to perform. I want to do rooms like this.”
After surpassing that dream and headlining Glastonbury this year, her track ‘Training Season’ was named as one of NME’s Best Songs of 2024, coming in at Number 42: “A stunning slice of disco pop backed by a throbbing, infectious beat.”
Likewise, Roan discussed her Missouri upbringing, saying she was “grateful” to be from there, despite finding growing up “quite religious”, saying: “I know for a lot of people, it’s actually very freeing. For me it almost did the opposite, where I felt like I couldn’t be myself, that who I was was a sin and I was going to hell no matter how good of a person I was or how much I loved God, for being gay.”
Her breakthrough track ‘Good Luck, Babe’ was recently named as one of NME’s Best Songs of 2024, clinching the top spot a Number One: “There are hits, and then there are career-making hits. Released in April, this standalone single sent Chappell Roan supernova and turned her debut album, ‘The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess’, into an overdue smash.”
The special rounded off with Lowe joining Gaga on guitar for a cover of ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ which is set to be released independently as an audio track.