He Had a Bad Day

He Had a Good Hit

Didn’t the song “Bad Day” feel like a one-hit wonder (OHW) even when it was first popular on the radio? Couldn’t you feel it, as I, who am psychic, did?

I remember seeing Daniel Powter on GMA at the time the song came out, in 2006, and thinking right then and there that something wasn’t right. “The camera don’t lie,” indeed. He looked like the lovely Michael Stipe on a bad day: His skin pallor off, eyes dead/dying; the hat obviously intended to hide baldness, what else is he hiding, he looks like he learned his ABCs from the types of hepatitis, et cetera.

Worse, he seemed uncomfortable with his situation, like he just wanted to go back to Canada and score some horse and be a sensitive songwriter-busker, but some money men had ordained that he would have the hit single of the new century — wait, the new millennium! He was the Powter Keg and they were tappin’ that!

But I could just tell he was too weird to be a star (you can’t kid a kidder), and that the screaming girls outside Rockefeller Center were inwardly dismayed at the appearance of the guy behind the singing voice, but it was too late, the “Good Morning, America!” producers had shotguns, and they were digging them into the girls’ backs whispering for them to keep shrieking.

Then in recent months I had actually thought about Powter again, and wanted to ask someone (Gabe?) or something (wikipedia?): What Ever Happened to Daniel Powter? Clearly he had taken a powder (sorry), because there was no follow-up hit?

Then, in that way that the culture often answers my private thoughts, there he was again in the news, and the answer was what I divined it would be. I hadn’t missed the second big hit from Daniel Powter. I am not that out of touch. There wasn’t one. But I’m $ure he did alright on “Bad Day.”

More than just being a catchy ditty – OK, I bought it on iTunes! – and an OHW, “Bad Day” is kind of a fitting anthem for the Aughts or whatever this decade has been called. We Had a Bad Decade. We had a bad decade. We haaad a baaaaaad decaaaaade. Ay ya ya ya.

He Had a Good Decade

Then the next day you got news that Marshall “Slim Shady”/”M&Ms” Mathers, also a stone cold has-been as I write this, sold more records since 2000 than even the Beatles. He’s the top seller of this decade that has no acceptable name, much as he doesn’t.

Powter’s pre-“Bad Day” album was called “I’m Your Nelly” and his post-“Bad Day” album was called “Under the Gaydar.” Under it, indeed! I don’t know what sexuality he chooses. Let’s just say wikipedia has no section about his personal life. Let’s just say he doesn’t sing about how he loves girls. Let’s just say Eminem would probably refuse to share the stage with Daniel Powter, as he originally did with Elton John. Let’s just say I’ll bet it would’ve been a much different scene if Brüno had flown butt-first into Powter’s face rather than Mathers’s face.

Who cares, though? So “He Is a Bad Gay”? The closeted thing could be all an act, a ploy to get girls, just as I’ve always suspected Eminem’s sullen, frowning “I Had a Bad Day” persona was malarkey. I just know he’s a super-funloving sweetheart, always being silly and pulling practical jokes and laughing behind closed doors in his Ultimate McMansion outside Detroit. Actually outside Rochester, Michigan, which is outside Detroit. Double-outsider. Maybe he has a really awkward laugh he’s trying to hide, like, a nerdy horse laugh like that guy on “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Or a high-pitched winnie, or a ridiculous snort-laugh. Or a super-gay cackle.

(I liked it in the ’90s when Eminem would sometimes wear his practical and fashionable little eyeglasses in public. Like, way to just straight-up torpedo the whole tough persona you’re assiduously selling. Way to baffle me. I guess contact lenses are for queers, in his world? Real men wear glasses?)

I was at Como’s Pizza on Woodward Avenue in Ferndale, Michigan, a few years back, sitting on the lanai, when I whispered urgently and very seriously to my friend Paul: “Oh, my God, I think that’s Eminem! Don’t look now.” Paul stood up and pretended to go to the bathroom (like, he went in the bathroom and made a peeing sound with his mouth, but didn’t actually pee) and came back with his up-close report. “SM, that’s a woman. It’s a lesbian.” I looked back over at the person with the platinum buzzcut, white visor, no makeup, hip-hop clothes, and white tennis shoes and realized that Paul was right. Eminem is a lesbian.

You know who has really Had a Bad Day, though? Tiger Woods.

OK, that’s the end of this blog post. Very topical, for once. Well, I’m a few days late with the Powter and Eminem stuff, but hey, pardon me all over the place. I mentioned Tiger Woods! That story’s got legs!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

TAGS: Brüno • Canadian-born Buskers • Daniel Powter • detroit • Elton John • Eminem • Good Morning America • iTunes • Michael Stipe • Michigan • Rockefeller Center • Tiger Woods