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Daniel Powter

by Daniel Powter

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"Bad Day," the first single off Daniel Powter's small masterpiece of a debut disc, has been divebombing TV-watching Americans for months. Turn on "American Idol" and there it is, accompanying the latest axed contestant off the stage. Switch over to Showtime, and it's on promos for "Weeds." The VH1 video is inescapable. Yet nobody knows who the guy is (a 35-year-old French Canadian, it turns out), and attempts to compare him to other singers inevitably come up short. Powter is poppier than James Blunt, more substantial than Adam Levin, and way less hangdoggish than Train. He is--and there may be no flattering way of saying this--like the late-'70s pop king Leo Sayer: an elastic-voiced and enormously infectious singer who can make you feel like dancing in the space of a few deft keyboard plinks. Powter, the disc, has legs, too: "Bad Day" is as big a bummer as its title suggests compared with the all-out party that is "Jimmy Gets High." "Free Loop" chugs toward its vaguely sad station stop in the most ingratiating way possible, and "Song 6" sucks you in with a groove that won't soon stop doing loop-de-loops around your every thought. Powter to the people--it should have come a lot sooner. --Tammy La Gorce