Jimmy Fallon slapped on his flat cap, grabbed his acoustic guitar and gave James Taylor’s homesick anthem “Carolina in My Mind” a quarantine twist on The Tonight Show Tuesday.
Fallon dubbed his parody cover “Carolina (or Anywhere Else)” and crafted a set of goofy verses about wanting to be anywhere but home — from Benihana (“Just to see a shrimp fly/Just to see some rice fry”) to the Home Depot (“I don’t need tools or house plants/Just wanna smell humans and wear pants”). The Tonight Show host then brought the song to a charming and sweet close, singing, “Gonna shake hands and hug real tight/And before/We know it it’ll be all right/And we’ll leave this all behind/Won’t have to go to Carolina in our minds.”
The actual James Taylor appeared on The Tonight Show earlier this month, where he shared an at-home performance of his 1971 song “You Can Close Your Eyes” with help from his wife Kim and his son Henry. Fallon, meanwhile, previously parodied Taylor back in 2018 when he turned “Fire and Rain” into a spoof of White House dysfunction called “Fire and Fury,” after Michael Wolff’s controversial book about President Donald Trump. Back in 2015, Fallon even convinced Taylor to partake in a bit where they performed a song together while riding a seesaw.
