When 18-year-old Johns Creek High School graduate Rett Bush first heard about The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Alliance for Musical Theatre Songwriting Challenge for High School Students in the fall of 2025, the young musician wasn’t sure he had the experience to win.
Although he had spent years writing his own music and performing in several rock bands and had experience acting in various theater productions, he knew that composing for musical theater required a different tune.
“I think that what made it challenging is that I couldn’t just hone in on just one specific part of the song,” Bush said during a recent interview with WABE.
“I couldn’t just focus on like having good guitar riffs or having catchy vocal melodies. I needed it all to fit together, but also tell a compelling story. So I think for this particular track, I kind of had to start with more of the story aspect, and think about what point I was trying to make to communicate to the audience before I could even like start getting into like the writing, composing, producing.”
And within that process, “Welcome to Winter’s Edge” was born.
“n the canon right now, there are not a lot of existing musicals that employ a heavy metal score and lean into some of those heavier rock-style elements.”
The song follows the main character — a sentient robot — who faces an impossible choice: save himself and abandon humanity’s last survivors, or sacrifice everything.
The heavy-metal-scored song was announced in May as one of the eight national winners, news that he learned just minutes before leaving home for his high school graduation.
“I’ve always been very interested in like dystopian media, like dystopian fiction and all that stuff,” said the musician, who notes that this was the most challenging and time-consuming song he’s ever written.
“I think this song, on a technical scale, kind of pushes the boundaries of what is possible for musical theater. In the canon right now, there are not a lot of existing musicals that employ a heavy metal score and lean into some of those heavier rock-style elements.”
Bush and the other contest winners will now get to see their songs be transformed into a full-scale musical production at a special concert in New York City on June 15. It will be not only his first time hearing the song performed live for an audience, but also his first ever trip to the Big Apple.
In the weeks leading up to the performance, the budding songwriter has been assigned a mentor, musical theater composer Rob Rokicki, and a team of theatrical professionals to bring the song to life.
“They’ve worked in the industry for years … it is an amazing opportunity, and I’m very grateful and thankful to be the recipient,” Bush said.
He notes that while he has enjoyed a fair amount of creative input and collaboration in the process, it has come with its share of hard work.
“It’s been kind of a whirlwind,” he admits nonchalantly.
“[I’m] sending audio files to my team that’s working on the song, coordinating travel and transportation … it’s been a lot of back and forth between what the song is going to look like, what the concert’s going to look like, how can I prepare my team to work on the song. Once we cross all those steps, we’re in New York for three days, and then that’s our time to get it ready to go and get it performed at the concert.”
“I needed it all to fit together, but also tell a compelling story.”
In addition to the live performance, the organizations are providing Bush and each winning student with a $2,500 scholarship, courtesy of the NMPA S.O.N.G.S. Foundation.
The incoming University of Georgia student, who will pursue a double major in political science and economics, says he hopes the song’s debut not only entertains the audience but also makes them wonder how they would feel if they were in the protagonist’s shoes…
“What would you do if you were him?” he said. “How far would you go? How much would you sacrifice?”
