Bad Day singer Daniel Powter shares the dark side of writing a life-changing hit
‘It was like a virus that would not go away,’ the Canadian singer-songwriter says in a Q interview
Twenty years ago, B.C.'s Daniel Powter wrote the song Bad Day, which quickly became one of the biggest hits of 2005.
It earned him a Grammy nomination, sold millions of copies and launched his career as an artist. But before he wrote the song that would change his life, Powter was simply trying to make it as a songwriter. His only aspiration was to be behind the scenes, not the centre of attention.
"I wasn't truly invested in being an artist at all," he tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "I actually had a record deal offered to me and I was not inclined to sign it…. It wasn't until I was completely broke that I decided, well, maybe I'll just become an artist. I had no more money left."
The inspiration for Bad Day came to Powter during a ferry ride between Victoria and Vancouver, when he saw a poster that read, "Having a bad day?"
"I just wrote that line and then the rest wrote itself," he says. "I really don't feel like I had much to do with it because the entire melody and chord structure was done in 10 [minutes]."
While nobody wanted the track at first, Powter says that all changed when someone in France picked it up as the theme song for a Coca-Cola ad campaign in Europe.
From there, Bad Day became a major international hit that got bigger than anyone could have ever imagined — and that scared Powter. As his star began to rise and people around the world started to recognize him, his mental health took a steep decline.
"That's when things got really depressing for me," he says. "I kind of went straight down at that point…. You really don't know if you want to be in the spotlight until you're actually in the spotlight. You can say you want to, and you think, 'Oh, man, I'd love to be Taylor Swift.' Really? No, no. It's a prison."
Powter adds that Bad Day eclipsed him as an artist, making it extremely difficult for him to get any of his other singles off the ground. "It was like a virus that would not go away," he says.
Feeling suffocated by his success, he turned to drugs and alcohol to "anesthetize" himself from the public. "I was constantly, if not constantly, almost 90 per cent of the time either inebriated or couldn't get out of bed," he says. "It got really bad."
Today, Powter is sober and happily living with his family in Portland, Ore. While his relationship to Bad Day remains complicated, he says he feels blessed that he doesn't have to worry about money anymore.
"I am proud of that song," he says. "It took me a long time to come to terms with that…. Now, it's like, dude, look what it's done for you. Look where you are — and it's great."
The full interview with Daniel Powter is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Daniel Powter produced by Vanessa Nigro.
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