A/N: Consider this background to 'Say Hi to the Family' and 'Say Goodbye to Sanity' - if you've read them. Otherwise just consider it a regular, standalone fic based on my personal headcanon of Wilbur becoming a famous singer/songwriter. (If you want to go read those other 2 fics, you should know they're timecest before you do, BUT it does explain the brief comment on his songwriting)
When Wilbur was six, he was humming along to Frankie and the other frogs' songs outside his mother's music room. Eventually, the music stopped, and he looked up, confused. The door he was leaning on opened, and he fell back, looking up at his mother with big, brown eyes. "Hi Mommy."
"Were you listening?" Franny asked, kneeling down with a playful smile.
"I like your music. It's pretty."
She grinned. "You wanna come make some music with us?"
Wilbur's grin answered even before he could say 'yes'.
At first he was too shy to sing along, and shook his maracas shyly in the background, humming quietly to himself.
It wasn't until he was seven that he gained the courage to ask if he could sing with Frankie.
"Well, you need a few lessons first," Franny said, smirking at him.
So his mother started giving him singing lessons - and he improved quickly. Every other day, whenever he got home, he'd go straight to the music room and sing with the frogs.
But his dancing was sloppy. So when he was eight, his grandmother started to give him dancing lessons.
By the time he was ten, he was almost better than Frankie at dancing.
But he wanted to be good at other things. Not just singing and dancing. So when he was fourteen, he asked his mother to give him other music lessons. On anything she could teach.
He learned piano when he was fourteen, and that knowledge converted into keyboard easily, so that was two instruments down.
Drums came when he was fifteen. He kept up half the family most nights with his practices, and as understanding as they all were, they were relieved when he moved on to harp when he was sixteen.
Violin took years seventeen and eighteen.
When he was nineteen, Franny was so proud that she posted a video of him singing while playing keyboard online. He was famous by the end of the night.
Songwriting had been easy since he was fourteen - before that, his songs had been choppy and unfeeling. Just generally not good. But at nineteen, he'd perfected it to the point that he was able to write, and sell, an entire album of songs.
It topped the charts, and for months on end, he heard his songs on the radio over and over, to the point that he nearly hated the sound of his own voice.
But it didn't stop him from writing another album. And then a third.
Singing in front of his family, he found when he gave his first concert at twenty, was different than singing in front of a crowd of strangers - though, his family was rightfully a crowd itself.
But he loved the rush, and it wasn't long before he was going on tours across the country. All over the world.
When he was twenty-six, his father made him a self-strumming guitar and, just like the fancy tour bus that showed off holographic pictures of him, Wilbur used it on every tour, every concert.
As selfish as he might have been, he never forgot about his family. He wouldn't be there without them, after all. He always gave shoutouts to his family after each interview, after each televised concert.
And every time he came home, there was a big celebration to welcome him back, in true Robinson fashion.
Wilbur's love of music had started with his family. It was because of them that he was famous. It was because of them that he was such a star.
He'd never forget that.