Growing up as a triplet was strange, to say the least. Being so close in age meant that we were experiencing everything at the exact same time. We were learning about the world and ourselves in tandem. This, naturally, lent itself to many fights among the three of us; especially between my sister and I since we shared a room for most of our childhood. However, one thing that always, always, brought us closer together was music and our undeniable love for it. Music has always been a huge part of our family and there were always songs filtering throughout our house. After dinner, my dad would bang on the dining room table, singing “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow and during bath time my mom would sing “Copacabana” by Barry Manilow. My parents raised us on music and that has been a constant bridge between my siblings and I. When my sister and I still shared a room, the only piece of decoration that we could both agree on was the Justin Bieber poster that we hung up on the wall and kissed every night before bed.
As we got older and started discovering who we were as people, we all grew somewhat distant. My siblings and I are very different people. We have different interests, friend groups and hobbies. It’s almost hard to believe sometimes that we were even raised by the same people. Naturally, that also means that we have very different music tastes. This specific difference, however, is the one thing that has kept my siblings and I close for so long though. I’m personally not a huge fan of rap, but my brother loves it. He has tried to convince me again and again that rap is the best music form. He has played me XXXTentacion, A$AP Rocky and Kendrick Lemar in an attempt to convince me of this. While I would never listen to any of those artists on my own, listening to them with my brother will always put a smile on my face and I could never tell him to stop. On the flip side, I make him listen to Boygenius, Matt Meason and Mitski in an attempt to show him that rap is not the best genre and no matter how much he grumbles about his music being “better”, he also never tells me to turn it off.
My sister, on the other hand, listens to artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Nessa Barret. Again, not necessarily my cup of tea but I’ll always sing along to her music if I can and I always make sure to send her the latest sad music I’m listening to in hopes of expanding her taste while still conforming to the type of music that she likes. Then, when we are all together, driving or just hanging out at the house, we all take turns queuing songs so that we can share our music with each other, and so that there aren’t any fights. Regardless, doing this, sharing music with my siblings, is one of my favorite parts of our relationships. No matter how angry they can sometimes make me, I’ll always sit down and listen to a song they suggest to me. This is how we share ourselves with each other. It connects us to our childhood and who we used to be to each other even if that isn’t the case anymore. Especially now that we are all at different colleges and rarely see much of each other anymore, I’m so grateful that I get to know who they are as people and how they are growing through the music they have introduced to me. More than anything else, music is what bonds my family and I wouldn’t want it any other way.