The medieval problem of universals rules everything around me

The comedian Rob Paravonian’s “Pachelbel rant” is one of the first YouTube videos I remember watching. He complains about how soul-numbingly boring it was to play the cello line in Canon in D: eight notes, over and over. He performs a whole comedy bit on the theme that modern pop songs keep reusing (essentially) that same chord progression so that he feels like he is being haunted by the…