Daniel Richard Powter (born February 25, 1971) is a Canadian singer, songwriter and pianist. 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.