What Is Daniel Johns' Net Worth?
Daniel Johns is an Australian musician, singer, and songwriter who has a net worth of $20 million. Daniel Johns is best known as the former frontman of the band Silverchair and was also a member of The Dissociatives. With Silverchair, Daniel released the studio albums "Frogstomp" (1995), "Freak Show" (1997), "Neon Ballroom" (1999), "Diorama" (2002), and "Young Modern" (2007), which were all certified 3× Platinum or higher in Australia. The band had several hit singles, such as "Tomorrow," "Pure Massacre," "Freak," "Abuse Me," "Cemetery," "Anthem for the Year 2000," "The Greatest View," and "Straight Lines." As a solo artist, Johns has released the albums "Talk" (2015) and "FutureNever" (2022), and they reached #2 and #1, respectively, on Australia's ARIA Albums Chart. The Dissociatives released a self-titled album in 2004, and it was certified Gold in Australia. In 2007, "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked Daniel #18 on its list of "The Twenty-Five Most Underrated Guitarists."
Early Life
Daniel Johns was born Daniel Paul Johns on April 22, 1979, in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. He is the son of Julie and Greg Johns, and he has two younger siblings. During Daniel's youth, Julie was a homemaker, and Greg was the owner of a fruit shop. Johns and his siblings grew up in the Newcastle suburb of Merewether, and Daniel graduated from Newcastle High School in 1997.
Career
When Daniel was 12 years old, he formed the band The Innocent Criminals with his friends Chris Joannou and Ben Gillies, and they spent at least four hours per day practicing after school. When they were 15, they entered a demo of their song "Tomorrow" in a competition run by the SBS show "Nomad," and it won. By this point, the band was called Silverchair, and in 1994, they signed a three-album record deal with Sony Music. They released their debut album, "Frogstomp," on March 27, 1995, and it reached #1 on Australia's ARIA Albums Chart and #2 on the New Zealand Albums chart. The album was certified 6× Platinum in Australia, 3× Platinum in Canada, 2× Platinum in the U.S., and Platinum in New Zealand, and "Tomorrow" topped the ARIA Top 50 Singles chart, Canada Rock/Alternative chart, and "Billboard" Album Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks charts and went 4× Platinum in Australia. The single "Pure Massacre" reached #2 on the charts in Australia and New Zealand.
Silverchair's next four albums, "Freak Show" (1997), "Neon Ballroom" (1999), "Diorama" (2002), and "Young Modern" (2007), were certified 3× Platinum in Australia and reached #1 on the ARIA Albums Chart. "Freak Show" featured the top 10 singles "Freak," "Abuse Me," and "Cemetery," and "Anthem for the Year 2000" from "Neon Ballroom" reached the top 10 on the ARIA Top 50 Singles chart, the Canada Rock/Alternative chart, New Zealand's Recorded Music NZ chart, and the UK Rock & Metal chart. "Diorama" included the single "The Greatest View," which peaked at #3 on the ARIA Top 50 Singles chart and #4 on the Canadian Nielsen SoundScan chart and the Recorded Music NZ chart. "Straight Lines" from "Young Modern" reached #1 on the ARIA Top 50 Singles chart and the Australia Top 40 Digital Tracks chart. In May 2011, the band announced an "indefinite hibernation," stating that "it's become increasingly clear that the spark simply isn't there between the three of us at the moment."
Johns formed the band The Dissociatives with DJ Paul Mac in 2003, and their 2004 self-titled album reached #12 on the ARIA Albums Chart and was certified Gold in Australia. Daniel released his first solo album, "Talk," in 2015, and it reached #2 on the ARIA Albums Chart. His second solo album, 2022's "FutureNever," reached #1 on that chart and #18 on the UK Album Downloads chart. Johns has also performed on songs by 360 ("Impossible"), Slumberjack ("Open Fire"), and What So Not ("Be OK Again"). In 2021, he hosted the podcast "Who Is Daniel Johns?" on Spotify, and it became the music service's most popular podcast in Australia.
Personal Life
In 1999, Daniel met singer/actress Natalie Imbruglia backstage at a London Silverchair concert, and they began dating in October of that year after meeting again at an after-party for the ARIA Music Awards in Sydney. They became engaged in late 2002 and married on December 31, 2003. The two had a long-distance relationship since Imbruglia lived in London and Johns lived in Newcastle, and Natalie wrote the 2005 song "Counting Down the Days" about their relationship. Daniel wrote and produced Natalie's 2005 song "Satisfied" and co-wrote her 2009 song "Want." Johns and Imbruglia divorced in 2008, and they released a joint statement about their split, writing, "This mutual decision has not been taken lightly or quickly. However, our career demands and our lives in different parts of the world have brought us to the point where unfortunately this difficult decision was necessary for both of us. We have simply grown apart through not being able to spend enough time together." After the split, Daniel began a relationship with model Louise Van der Vorst, and they moved to New York City in 2009 for Louise's career. They later lived together in Newcastle, but in April 2012, it was reported that Johns had ended the relationship a few months earlier. Daniel began a relationship with former model Michelle Leslie in 2016.
Getty Images
During the "Freak Show" tour in 1997, Johns struggled with depression, and there were rumors that he was suffering from an eating disorder or drug addiction. He later revealed that he developed anorexia nervosa as a teenager and that at his thinnest, he weighed 110 pounds. Daniel also said that he considered suicide, telling ABC interviewer Andrew Denton in 2004, "There was three or four years of my life where I hated myself and you know, would have quite happily ended it. But I'm just not like that anymore . . . like [I've] got this amazing life, amazing wife." After recording the 2002 Silverchair album "Diorama," Johns was diagnosed with reactive arthritis and sought treatment in Los Angeles. Daniel is a supporter of animal rights, and in 1998, he stated that he was a vegan. In 2009, it was reported that Johns was a pescetarian. Daniel was arrested for DUI in October 2014, and in February 2015, he was ordered to pay a fine of $880 and refrain from driving until June 2015; he also completed a traffic offenders course. In March 2022, he was arrested for DUI again after his car veered onto the wrong side of the highway and collided with a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction. No one was seriously injured in the accident, and Johns admitted himself to a rehabilitation center. A judge opted to give Daniel a 10-month intensive corrections order instead of jail time and disqualified him from driving for seven months.
Awards and Nominations
Silverchair earned nearly 50 ARIA Music Award nominations, winning 21 of them, and Johns earned an award for Producer of the Year for their album "Diorama" in 2002. For his solo work, he has received ARIA Music Award nominations for Best Male Artist for "Talk" (2015), Best Video for "Aerial Love" (2015), and Best Solo Artist for "FutureNever" (2022). In 2023, "FutureNever" earned him an AIR Award for Best Independent Pop Album or EP and a nomination for Independent Album of the Year. Daniel has received five APRA Award nominations, winning Song of the Year and Most Played Australian Work for Silverchair's "Straight Lines" and Songwriter of the Year in 2008. He was also nominated for Song of the Year for "Aerial Love" in 2016 and "I Feel Electric" in 2023. Silverchair won an MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer's Choice: MTV Australia for "Silverchair: Freak" in 1997, and they were nominated in that category for "Silverchair: Cemetery" in 1998. The Dissociatives earned seven ARIA Award nominations, winning Best Cover Art for "The Dissociatives" and Best Video for "Somewhere Down the Barrel" in 2004. They also received an APRA Award nomination for Song of the Year for "Young Man Old Man (You Ain't Better Than the Rest)" in 2005.
Real Estate
In 2017, Daniel and his younger sister, Chelsey, purchased a $503,100, two-bedroom home in Mayfield, Newcastle. In 2001, Johns paid $1.6 million for the top two floors of a Bondi apartment block. In 2016, Daniel and the building's four other owners teamed up to sell for nearly $15 million.
