"Bad Day" is a pop song by Canadian singer-songwriter Daniel Powter from his self-titled second studio album (2005).

Tom Whalley, Warner Bros. Records' chairman and CEO, offered Powter a contract after hearing a demo tape of it.

Different shows and artists covered and parodied "Bad Day", including Saturday Night Live and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

After leaving MacEwan University in Edmonton at 20, Powter moved to Vancouver, British Columbia where he played keyboards before he started composing songs.

[3] He then thought "bad day" would be a good choice for the chorus,[1] and wrote the lyrics partly based on his life as "a struggling musician".

[1] After this failure, his new representative, Gary Stamler, played a demo tape for Tom Whalley, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros.

[1] He accepted the offer in April 2003 and, along with Dawson and producer Mitchell Froom, worked on his album and the song in Los Angeles, California.

[a] On February 8, Barnes & Noble released it on an exclusive extended play (EP), which also contained "Free Loop", "Lie to Me", and "Song 6".

[23] On August 6, 2008, an EP live from Tokyo was released exclusively on iTunes and it included "Song 6", "Free Loop", "Best of Me", "Love You Lately" and "Bad Day".

"Bad Day" is a midtempo pop[27] power ballad,[28][29][30] performed in a moderate groove and accompanied by a piano.

[4] David Browne of Entertainment Weekly said it is: "addressed to anyone who's feeling depressed ... but [in contrast] its grand, panoramic arrangement wants to pump you up".

[35] Simon Donohue of the Manchester Evening News commented its sound "seagues [sic] from boy band banality to Foo Fighters-style raucous rock".

[27] Although About.com's Bill Lamb described its lyrics as having a "reassuring, comforting" tone,[39] Powter said the song "mak[es] fun of self-absorbed and narcissistic people who bitch and gripe".

Billboard's Chuck Taylor called the song "instantly memorable" and praised its instrumentation for being different "from the scores of adolescent thrust-rockers currently dominating the scene.

[42] Eric R. Danton from the Hartford Courant classified it as the best track on the album, while Erlewine called it "the template for the rest of his debut".

[37] Alan Connor of BBC News Magazine said it is a typical sentimental song but that in "Bad Day"'s case "there's even less detail".

[48] "Bad Day" won an award from the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada as one of six Canadian pop songs with the most radio airplay in 2005.

[53] The song was nominated for Pop 100 Single of the Year at the 2006 Billboard Music Awards losing to Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous".

[87] "Bad Day" received a three-times platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for digital sales of over 3 million in September 2009.

[97] "Bad Day" was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipment of over 70,000 copies.

[112] The music video accompanying "Bad Day" features a man (Jason Adelman) and a woman (Samaire Armstrong) going about their daily routines over a three-day period.

The central point of the video occurs when they paint separately on the same billboard, which originally featured a woman sitting on a bench.

At the end of the video, they finally meet when the man offers the woman an umbrella during a rain shower as a taxi cab stops for them.

Throughout the video, Powter is shown playing piano on Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles while wearing a tuque—a type of knitted hat.

[38] "Bad Day" was subsequently used in other shows, including the Brazilian series Malhação in 2005,[122] and TV Asahi's 2006 Japanese drama Regatta: Kimi to Ita Eien.

[125] In 2014, the song was used as Lestrade's ringtone for Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson in an episode of Elementary, titled "The One Percent Solution".

[128][129] In April 2006, "Bad Day" was parodied on an episode of the television series Saturday Night Live, featuring a montage of former member of the United States House of Representatives Tom DeLay.

[3][130] The Daily Show used the song for an American Idol-based montage satirizing the June 2006 death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

[140] Powter has performed the song on several television shows,[32] including CD USA[141] in February 2006,[c] and Total Request Live on April 6, 2006.

[131] In 2024 Powter appeared on the fourth season of Canada's Got Talent, posing as an aspiring singer-songwriter with the judges only realizing who he actually was as he performed "Bad Day".