Waitaki Girls’ High School year 13 student Neave Meikle, 17, won the Apra Lyric Award for her song Passerine’s Boy.
"This was a pretty special experience," she said.
"I’m stoked."
Neave used her storytelling skills to write her song.
"My song is basically about a boy who is in love with a girl who doesn’t love him back and he feels inferior because of that."
She found it easy to write from a boy’s perspective because she had done a lot of novel writing in the past.
It was interesting exploring a character who felt differently to how she would feel in the same scenario, she said.
She mostly wrote indie and folk songs, but was working on writing a dystopian novel.
Music teacher Russell Fleming had encouraged her to get into music.
Next year, she had planned to study geology at the University of Otago, but her win was making her think about doing something more creative instead.
