Happy Holidays from the CBMA Team!
Genre: Alternative R&B, Alternative Pop
Period: 2013-Pres
Region: Alberta
Ruth Berhe, born on 2 July 1995, is more widely recognized as Ruth B. She is an Edmonton, Alberta born Canadian singer and songwriter. Ruth, the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, grew up listening to music from her parents’ homeland. She later discovered artists that would become formative influences on her songwriting, such as Stevie Wonder and Lauryn Hill. Ruth began writing songs in her late teens after taking piano at eight and singing her whole life. She soon came up with “Lost Boy,” a Peter Pan-inspired piano ballad. “Lost Boy” swiftly went viral after being put on Vine in 2015, with listeners pulled to Ruth’s heart-on-sleeve narrative. Ruth B. emerged as an instantly fascinating singer who wanders between dark reality and her dream world with her triple-platinum first song, “Lost Boy,” released in 2015. The Canadian-Ethiopian singer/songwriter/pianist, an occasional poet who wrote her storybooks as a child, infuses her songs with deep emotional honesty, even as she lets her mind stray into delightfully enchanted landscapes.
By the end of 2015, she had released her gold-certified first EP, The Intro, which led to awards, including Breakthrough Artist of the Year at the 2017 Junos. Her gold-certified full-length debut Safe Haven, produced by Joel Little and Mike Elizondo, was released in 2017 and won her three Juno nominations, including Album of the Year and Artist of the Year. As of April 2023, her first album, “Safe Haven”, has received over 2 billion total streams globally. Her double-platinum hit “Lost Boy” has over 745 million Spotify listens, while her YouTube channel has over 550 million views as of May 2023. Her Safe Haven song “Dandelions” became a surprise success in 2022, thanks to TikTok, and charted abroad, including chart debuts in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, and Germany. As of April 2023, it has amassed over a billion streams worldwide. She has worked with and continues to collaborate with Grammy Award winners like D’Mile, Ido Zmishlany, and others. She says, “Writing songs has always been therapeutic, and I hope that hearing my songs helps others similarly. Whether they’re feeling lonely, heartbroken, or happy, I want them to know that someone else understands what they’re going through.”
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