Daniel Powter (CA)

About

Few songs defined a particular era of early 2000s pop quite like "Bad Day", the piano driven single that Daniel Powter wrote on a ferry ride between Victoria and Vancouver. It spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, made him the first solo Canadian male artist to reach number one on that chart since Bryan Adams in 1995, and became inescapable across Europe too, landing at number one in Germany, Ireland and Italy. American Idol used it so heavily in its fifth season that Powter performed it live at the finale. Powter has released several albums since, including Under the Radar in 2008 and the compilation Best of Me in 2010, but none of his subsequent work came close to replicating that breakthrough. Billboard named him the decade's top one hit wonder of the 2000s, a label that overshadows a catalog that spans pop, piano rock and soul. The Juno Award for Breakthrough Artist of the Year in 2006 and a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance remain the high watermarks of a career built almost entirely around one very catchy bad day.