The Double Agent is a music review webseries created by Ethan Johnson. formerly known as Worst Music Of The Year. He loves to make various Ranking Videos about anything that is on the Billboard Hot 100 and also uploads some mash ups on his channel as well. He likes to present some underrated songs.
He has a very deadpan view on the charts. You can find his show on YouTube
and can follow him on Twitter at @ItsEthanYaBoi. He's also part of the Talking The Charts podcast.
Tropes:
- Aborted Arc:
- Originally intended as a meta critic show, but it immediately became a music review show.
- He also stated he has no intention of continuing "The Outliers", since the show was a) not well executed enough in his opinion and b) didn't had nearly as many views as his regular videos.
- His videos overall, seeing as how his last video (which came after a full year hiatus) was the Worst Hits of 2017 list and he concluded it by saying he'd see the viewer in the Best List. He came back in the late 2019.
- Backdoor Pilot: The show originally was intended to be about random topics and even doing meta reviews to leave his show Worst Music Of The Year behind, but he warmed up talking about music again.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: In the segment for "Strip That Down" on his Top 20 Worst Hit Songs of the 2010s, Ethan sounds like Liam Payne's album LP1 was a massive commercial success at first when saying it debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, only for him to sarcastically reveal it topped the charts thrice by showing its true peak of #111.
- Blatant Lies: Some of his lists actually include more songs than advertised. For example, his "Top Ten Worst Chris Brown Songs" video is actually a Top Fifteen list.
- Broke the Rating Scale: The "Shit (0)" tier is supposed to be the lowest of the rankings... until Meghan Trainor's "Me Too" forced the creation of a "Negative One (-1)", which was eventually joined by Kodak Black.
- Call-Back: In the "top 10 worst songs of 2018" video he describes "Him & I" as "soundtrack for Joker x Harley Quinn AMV". In "Top 20 Worst Hit Songs of 2010s" he shows that someone not only made that video but it also gained over 5 million views.
- Can't Believe I Said That: In "Top 20 Worst Almost Hit Songs of the 2010s", Ethan isn't happy after stating "Beg For It" by Iggy Azalea was a failed-follow-up to "Fancy", a song he never liked to begin with:
- "Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I noticed it, you noticed it, it's very obvious what this is, a blatant attempt to recreate 'Fancy' note-for-note. And it did not succeed at capturing the hearts and minds of America like 'Fancy' did."[beat]"I hated saying that sentence."
- Caption Humor: At times, an entry mangles the artist name ("Ellie Gellie", "Derrick") or song title ("Bad and Boujee" was "Beep Boop" by "Beep Boo Boo Bop").
- Cluster F-Bomb: In the "Top 20 Worst Hit Songs of the 2010s" video, he gives a string of "fuck you"'s to Andy Grammer for bragging about not cheating on his wife in "Honey, I'm Good".
- Creator Killer:
- He considers "Obsessed" to be this for Mariah Carey, since as he points out, she has mostly been unable to gain any new hits of her own afterward except for "#Beautiful" in 2013, in contrast to her eighteen number ones in the '90s and 2000s.
- A running gag throughout most of the entries in "Top 20 Worst Almost Hit Songs of the 2010s" is Ethan suggesting the song he's covering was so bad, it outright ended their career. He supports his claim by showing the artists' Wikipedia discog page and noting after that song was released, every subsequent single had nothing but blanks in its respective "Peak chart positions" section.
- Crossover:
- With Asalieri in his Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1985.
- Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2008 was a crossover with Mark Grondin of Spectrum Pulse.
- While the majority of his Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2013 video had him doing it alone, he called upon YouTube user MalaCritico for one song on it ("My Nigga"). He also collaborated again with Mala Critico in "Top 10 Best Songs Of 2014 (That I Forgot)".
- In his "Rock 2016 Billboard Top 20 Ranked" video, he collaborated with fellow YouTube music reviewer, The LP Club.
- The "Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2001" with Diamond Axe Studios Music.
- Deadpan Snarker: He barely smiles while cracking jokes and constantly looks unhappy.
- Don't Explain the Joke: In "Worst Hit Songs of 2020", when discussing the "Savage Love" remix, Ethan quips on Jason getting his number 1 with a remix that "people are just gonna keep doing it. Hell, maybe BTS themselves might start doing it", before following it up with "You see, you see it's funny cause I'm pretending not to know that they're already doing it".
- Guilty Pleasures: "Top 10 Songs I'm Ashamed In Liking". Also appears when he ranks the entire year-end Hot 100.
- He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: In-Universe, Ethan has joked in videos about murdering Anthony Fantano for giving a negative review to "Circles" by Post Malone.
- Hypocritical Humor: In two different videos, when discussing the song "Classic Man", he comments on the singer being the kind of stereotypical Internet Nice Guy who should be wearing a fedora or is convinced that a suit makes him the classiest dude in the room, before making some gesture to distract the audience from his own typical outfit.
- It's Been Done: Ethan has more than once called himself a Todd in the Shadows ripoff - most blatantly, in the Top 11 Worst Songs of 2011 where Kevin reads from Todd's review of Hot Chelle Rae's "Tonight Tonight" to call him out on it.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: He likes using gross misspellings to mock certain fanbases.
- Running Gag:
- If Madonna gets a dishonorable mention in any of his worst videos, he has a disgusted look before saying nothing more than "Ew." note Averted in the "Top 20 Worst Almost Hit Songs of the 2010s", in which "Give Me All Your Lovin'" is included as a #21, but "Ew" isn't said once.
- If Tyga is mentioned in a video, expect Ethan to note that he dated a 17-year-old girl when he was 25.
- The Scottish Trope: Given the tendency of Chris Brown fans to jump in his defense, the video on his worst tracks is actually about "C*** B***", and another has a song of his credited to #TeamBreezy.
- Shirtless Scene: In his Spring and Fall 2023 collaboration rankings with Diamond Axe Studios Music, and in his "Top 20 Worst Almost Hit Songs of the 2010's" video.
- Take That!: As any Caustic Critic, Ethan is prone to this. For instance, "I hate u I love u" is credited to "idk google it" and all that plays is a looped "I hate you...".
- Tempting Fate:
- At the end of "Summer 2016 Billboard Top 20 Ranked", he proclaims the Top 20 so bad he would rather listen to nothing but Chris Brown songs for the next two weeks."Oh my god, what did I set myself up for?"
- While discussing Beyoncé's "Check On It" during the Worst #1 Hits of the 2000s list:"But for now, let's just label this a fluke and hope she never dives this low agai—"[cut to "7/11"]"Fuck!"
- At the end of "Summer 2016 Billboard Top 20 Ranked", he proclaims the Top 20 so bad he would rather listen to nothing but Chris Brown songs for the next two weeks.
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Part of the reason he hates "Honey I'm Good" is because he thinks Andy Grammer sings about refusing to cheat on his wife as if it's something notable and praiseworthy.
- Younger Than They Look: Born in 2000, though given his relatively deep voice and (former) love of suits, you'd be excused for thinking he was a little older than 14 when he started the channel.
