Daniel Merriweather

Daniel Paul Merriweather was born the eldest of three boys for teacher parents, and grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Sassafras in the Dandenong Ranges.[1] Both his parents are teachers and he has two brothers.[2] His maternal grandfather, Ted Ellis, was also an Australian rules footballer for North Melbourne and Footscray, while Daniel is an Essendon supporter.

Merriweather attended The Patch Primary School, Billanook College, Blackburn High School[3] and Swinburne Senior Secondary College (for year 11) and left school when he was aged 17.[4] His musical education began with violin lessons at the age of four;[5] he started guitar at age 13;[6] his music grades at Blackburn High were average.[3] As a teen, he was in a social environment that cultivated violent tendencies and on one occasion was charged with assault.[7][8] After dropping out of school, he focused his attention on music, taking vocal lessons and performing in clubs around Melbourne.[9]

Merriweather spent much of his time between New York and London, and as from 2009 resided in East Harlem.[3][7] Since the age of 18, Merriweather has had a tattoo on his inside-right forearm bearing the Latin phrase for "love or money".[10] Merriweather indicated in 2009 that he planned another tattoo for his back – a 100-word excerpt from the last verse of the poem "Jim Jones", quoted in Robert Hughes' book The Fatal Shore, which includes "For night and day ... we toil and toil".[8][10]

Daniel Merriweather's first commercially released recording was a guest appearance on the track "All I Want" for Australian dance act Disco Montego's self-titled album in September 2002. The album peaked at No.17 on the ARIA Albums Chart.[11] He signed with the local label, Marlin Records,[7] which led to work with Mark Ronson, a United Kingdom DJ and guitarist, on the latter's debut album, Here Comes the Fuzz, ("She's Got Me" and "NYC Rules") in September 2003. Merriweather signed with Ronson's label, Allido Records, and worked on his debut solo single, "City Rules", as a revised version of "NYC Rules".[12] It was produced by Ronson and featured raps from New York MC Saigon and was issued in early 2004. Other musicians on the single are ?uestlove, The Black Eyed Peas' horn section and members of Beck's backing band.[13] He received an ARIA Award nomination for "City Rules" in the Best Urban Release category at the 2004 ceremony.[14]

"She's Got Me" was released as Merriweather's second single. While neither charted on the ARIA Top 50 Singles Chart,[15] both became favourites in clubs and urban music circles. "City Rules" won the Most Performed Dance Work category at the APRA Awards of 2005 and "She's Got Me" won the Best Urban Release category at the ARIA Music Awards of 2005.[16][17] "City Rules" obtained some airplay on the major Australian commercial radio stations FOX FM (Melbourne)/2Day FM and B105.

In 2005, he co-wrote and co-produced much of Phrase's debut album Talk with Force, also lending vocals to three tracks including the single "Catch Phrase". In March 2006, Undercover News reported that Merriweather was recording his debut album, The Fifth Season, with Ronson producing.[18] However, in August 2011, Merriweather recalled: "It was 12 songs out of a whole bunch of songs that I'd written. I came up with the idea of calling it The Fifth Season and someone put it on Wikipedia. But it wasn't really an album – it was just a collection of songs. There's a difference".[19]

In early 2007, Ronson featured Merriweather's lead vocals on a cover version of The Smiths' song "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" released as "Stop Me". It was re-composed with additional lyrics from the song "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by The Supremes. Merriweather admitted in an interview with The Guardian that he was not familiar with the Smiths song prior to recording the revised version: "Mark said, 'I want you to sing on this - it's my favourite Smiths song', so I listened to it. I'd heard it once before, but I was never a Smiths fan. But I thought it was beautiful".[20] It was issued as a single in April on Columbia Records and appeared on Ronson's compilation album Version that same month. It was a commercial success in Ronson's native United Kingdom, where it reached number two on the UK Singles Chart.[21] It peaked in the top 40 on the Swiss and Italian Singles Charts.[21] Merriweather performed it during Glastonbury 2008.

Merriweather's debut solo album, Love & War, also produced by Ronson, was released in June 2009, which reached number two on the UK Albums Chart and peaked in the top 10 on the Swiss Albums Chart.[22] It was preceded by the singles "Change" (February) and "Red" (May), which both made the top 10 on the UK Singles Chart. "Change" appeared in the top 10 on the Swiss Singles Top 75.[23] While "Red" was a top 10 hit on the Danish and Irish Singles Charts.[24] On the ARIA Albums Chart, Love & War reached the top 40 and "Change" peaked in the top 50 on the related singles chart.[15] At the ARIA Music Awards of 2009, he won the Best Male Artist category for Love & War.[25]

Merriweather was featured on Australian hip-hop artist Urthboy's single, "Naïve Bravado", in 2012. In that same year, Merriweather featured on hip-hop outfit Diafrix's single, "Simple Man". In 2013, Australian-American rap group Bliss N Eso worked with Merriweather on the track "Can't Get Rid of This Feeling". He appeared with DJ Mark Ronson in Glastonbury 2015 singing an earlier hit "Stop Me".

Merriweather cites Stevie Wonder, Prince, Jeff Buckley and Herbie Hancock as his major influences.[6][9]

In November 2019, Daniel announced his first single for ten years titled 'Everything I Need', followed up by an album announcement. On 3 April 2020 Merriweather released 'Rain'. Merriweather played a couple of sold out London gigs too.