Daniel Powter | |
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Powter in 2009
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Background information | |
Birth name | Daniel Richard Powter |
Born | February 25, 1971 |
Origin | Vernon, British Columbia, Canada |
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Years active | 1997–2010, 2012–present |
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Website | danielpowter |
Daniel Richard Powter (born February 25, 1971) is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his self-penned hit song "Bad Day" (2005), which spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100.
Powter grew up in Vernon, in the Okanagan-Shuswap region of British Columbia. As a child, Powter played the violin at the age of 4. He changed to piano at 10 years old after a group of children bullied him and destroyed his violin. Suffering from dyslexia, Powter had trouble in university studying music, and dropped out at the age of 20 in order to pursue his own musical career, learning all songs by ear and recording new melodies that he created. He started writing songs when he was 13 years old.
Powter released his first EP, I'm Your Betty, in 2000. The album, limited to a very small print, contains ten songs, two of which—"More Than I" and "Negative Fashion"—were featured on the television show Higher Ground.
Powter's first single, "Bad Day", was first released in Europe in mid-2005, in advance of his first album, Daniel Powter. Warner Bros. Records submitted the single for commercials, and it was subsequently chosen by Coca-Cola as the theme song for an ad campaign in Europe. The song achieved heavy airplay in most European countries, peaking at number three on the overall European airplay chart. It reached number one on national airplay in Germany, number one on the singles charts in the Republic of Ireland and Italy, number two in the United Kingdom—where it stayed in the top ten for thirteen weeks—and number three in Australia.