Daniel Richard Powter (; born February 25, 1971) is a Canadian musician and a songwriter. He is best known for his self-penned hit song "Bad Day" (2005), which was top of the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks. Biography Early life Powter grew up in Vernon, in the Okanagan-Shuswap region of British Columbia, alongside 2 brothers and a sister. As a child, Powter played the violin at the age of 4. He changed to piano at 16 years old after a group of children bullied him in the schoolyard, trashed and destroyed his violin. Due to dyslexia, Powter had trouble in university reading 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 moved to Vancouver at the age of 22 and met producer Jeff Dawson in 1997 and released his debut studio album, I'm Your Betty, on June 21, 2000. The album, limited to a very small print, contains ten songs, two of which—"More Than I" and "Negative Fashion"—were both featured on the television show Higher Ground in the episode "Wherefore Art Thou". Self-titled album (2005–2006) Powter's first single, "Bad Day", was first released in Europe in mid-2005, in advance of his second 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. In the United States, "Bad Day" was used extensively on the television series American Idol in its fifth season. Powter sang the song live at the end of the final show of that season on May 23, 2006. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts, making Powter the first solo Canadian male artist to top the Hot 100 since Bryan Adams in 1995 (with "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?"). The song also reached number one in