Daniel Richard Powter (born February 1971), grew up in Vernon, in the Okanagan Valley region of British Columbia, Canada. Debut album "I'm Your Betty" was released in 2000, and was limited to a very small print. It contained 10 songs, 2 of which, "More Than I" and "Negative Fashion", were featured on the TV series "Higher Ground".
Breakthrough single "Bad Day", from self titled second album "Daniel Powter", debuted in Europe in mid 2005. It was chosen by Warner Bros. Records as a submission for commercial production and was subsequently chosen by Coca-Cola as the theme song for an ad campaign in Europe. It was also used extensively by "American Idol" in its fifth season. The song achieved heavy airplay in most European countries, and made it to number 3 on the overall European airplay chart. It got to number 1 in Germany, Ireland and Italy, number 2 in the UK, staying in the top 10 for 13 weeks, and also number 3 in Australia. In the US it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 just 7 weeks after it was released, and made number 1 on the Adult Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts. Powter became 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 1 in his homeland of Canada.

In April 2006, he was named the "Best New Artist" at the Canadian Juno Awards, and has also been nominated for "Breakthrough Act" at the 2006 BRIT Awards, and a 2007 Grammy in the "Pop Vocal Performance" category (which was won by John Mayer).

Powter's next singles varied in success. In the US, "Free Loop", the second single from "Daniel Powter", failed to make the Hot 100 and barely broke the Adult Contemporary Top 30. During "Free Loop"'s brief chart tenure, "Bad Day" was still sitting at number 2 behind Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten". In the UK, "Free Loop" was also released as the follow-up single to "Bad Day", however Warner Bros. Records' international distributor, WEA failed to realize that "Free Loop" was chart ineligible due to a live version of "Bad Day" being featured as a B-side on the single ("Bad Day" was still in the UK Top 40 and due to UK chart rules, an artist cannot have a version of the previous single on the latest one if the previous is still charting). The next UK single, "Lie to Me", was heading for the UK Top 10, however this too was disqualified from the chart due to more problems with the "Bad Day" single. "Jimmy Gets High" was highly speculated to be the fourth single from the album in the UK, however, despite the video circulating on music channels and the song receiving good airplay, it was eventually not released due to US commitments.