The name Daniel Powter probably rings a bell if you remember singing along to this hit song back in the day.

Best known for his song Bad Day, Powter was in town recently to perform at the annual President’s Star Charity held at the MES Theatre. Besides performing Bad Day, he also performed Save Me with our homegrown talent, Sandra Riley Tang of The Sam Willows.

We asked Powter what his experience was like singing with her and he had nothing but words of praise.

Powter is personally heavily involved in charity work and one that he works closely with is MusiCares, which was founded by a friend of his and it does is help put musicians and people with substance abuse issues through treatment programmes. ‘It’s pretty phenomenal work what they do. They are really heavily involved with the Grammy’s and Eric Clapton is a huge contributor to them,’ he quips about the foundation that holds the annual MusiCares MAP Fund benefit concert which recognizes musicians for their devotion to helping other addicts struggling with the recovery process.

While still on the topic of charity work, Powter recalls a particularly memorable show that he had done in Paris, France. It was for a children’s hospital for children that were terminally ill. Just being in that environment and playing a show for them brought about a sense of humility. However, the most gripping aspect of it all was when he walked upstairs after the show was done and speaking with the terminally ill children who had to watch from the windows. That, for him, was a moment that he will never forget — watching little 5 and 6-year-olds struggling and hurting while being hooked up to the machines.

Speaking on his upcoming album that he is currently working on, Powter describes it to be more ‘carefully crafted’ as compared to his past works. ‘It’s difficult sometimes for me because I’ve sort of been guilty of going down the wrong path of writing something that’s a little bit too ‘pop’ for me,’ he explains. ‘That’s not me. I don’t want to do that.’ With this record, however, he has been getting a lot of input from other people.

One of the songwriters Powter has been working with is Linda Perry, who he describes as being ‘phenomenal’. He reveals that throughout the process of writing and recording for the forthcoming album, he has been paying extra attention to analysing and writing a lot more songs than he usually would. While he isn’t typically sure of the number of the songs that would make the final cut on the album until he has completed writing and listening to everything, he is going to narrow it down to a few from what he has written. ‘I’m always a fan of an album, but in this day and age it’s not as necessary so we’ll see,’ Powter muses about the changing landscape of music today, and mentions that while the album might be released a little later, there is definitely new music that will be released in the next month or two.

Album news aside, Powter is looking forward to kick-start a tour sometime in March 2018, starting off in China and including countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.