Two years ago, ruth b was a 19-year-old working at Marshalls in Edmonton, Canada, when she had an idea. Inspired by her love of fantasy novels, she wrote her first song, “Lost Boy,” a spare, soulful piano ballad about loneliness, packed with Peter Pan references. She uploaded six seconds of the chorus to Vine, which she’d previously used to post clips of herself singing Drake and Lana Del Rey songs. “Lost Boy” scored 84,000 likes in just a week, and a few months later, she had a deal with Columbia. This summer, the song became a Top 40hit. “If someone toldme a year ago that people would ask me for pictures at Starbucks,” she says, “I would’ve just laughed.”
On a recent summer afternoon, Ruth, 21, sits in a Laurel…
