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National economies collapse; species go extinct; political movements rise and fizzle. But — somehow, for some reason — Weird Al keeps rocking. --- Onstage, Weird Al sat on a wooden stool and started to snap like a lounge singer. With an orchestra swelling behind him— the tour was called “Strings attached”— he kicked into a soulful medley of 1980s parodies. If that does not sound great to you, if it in fact sounds like a very particular flavor of sonic hell, I’m here to tell you something, Weird Al was absolutely belting. He was singing the bejesus out of this ridiculous music. I leaned back in my chair, reassessing core assumptions I’d made about life. Was this somehow part of the joke? That Weird Al was an amazing singer? His voice was athletic and precise. It was rippling through intricate trills and runs. By the time he reached the medley’s climax, “Like a Surgeon,” his 1985 parody of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Yankovic was stretching for high notes and holding them over his head for the crowd to admire, like an Olympic weightlifter, who had just snatched 500 pounds. […] But it turns out that Weird Al approaches the composition of his music with something like the holy passion of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Looking through the “White & Nerdy” file felt like watching a supercomputer crunch through possible chess moves. Every single variable had to be considered, in every single line. The song begins with a simple sentence — “They see me mowing my front lawn” — and even here Yankovic agonized over “lawn” versus “yard” and “my” versus “the.” He sifted through phrases in gradations so small, they were almost invisible. […] Weird Al likes to say that every one of his albums is a comeback album. That’s because a parody career is not like a normal career. It has no internal momentum. Everyone always expects you to go away. […] Weird Al’s bond with his fans is atomic. He will stop and speak with them anywhere — at airports, outside the tour bus — for so long that it becomes a logistical problem. The fans approach him like a guru, and Weird Al responds with sweet, open, validating energy. […] The connection is so deep that it is more like a merging, and after a while it struck me that Weird Al has spent basically his whole life making his music for exactly these people, which is to say for his childhood self. For many decades, he has been trying to delight Alfred Yankovic, the bright, painfully shy kid who grew up alone in his tiny bedroom. For the benefit of that lonely boy, he reshaped the whole world of pop culture. His ridiculous music sent out a pulse, a signal, and these were the people it drew: the odd, the left out. A crowd of friends for that lonely kid.