On April 24, 2020, Will Bannister released his album Everything Burns. The fifth track on that album is a song that has been featured on Essie Country’s Song of the Week series—Easy to Love.
Will Bannister’s Easy to Love is an unmistakable country song. With traditional country instrumentation and Will’s rich baritone country vocals, no one can deny this song is a genuine country song.
Will Banister’s Easy to Love did not chart on any of the major national country charts that track commercial airplay or sales, including Billboard’s Country Airplay or Hot Country Songs charts.
Now let’s compare another song with the same title, Easy to Love. It’s not the same song lyrically but it has been marketed as country.
Easy to Love by Dustin Lynch, was released on May 30, 2025. Recently, this song peaked in the mid twenties on several different charts. It’s not a bad song, it’s just misclassified as country music.
It is not considered a major hit but it spent an unusual amount of time on the charts because it benefited from sustained country radio airplay, allowing it to remain on the charts for an extended period of time even though it never became one of his biggest hits.
Sometimes the best way to understand something is to compare two things that appear to be the same. In this case, two songs with the identical title—Easy to Love. Both are classified as country. One deserves the claim as country music and the other one does not.
Listen to them back to back, and you’ll hear why I believe one represents country music while the other represents the direction mainstream country has taken, which is pop-country with more pop than country.
To prove my point, I created a playlist on YouTube with just those two songs. You can listen to both of them back to back.
After listening to those two songs, I believe you will understand why I created Essie Country and launched a campaign to promote real country music.
The link to the Easy to Love playlist is below. When you arrive at the playlist, click on the “Play All” button and it will play both automatically back to back. You will witness, first hand, the conflict with today’s mainstream country and real country music.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYb-I5igAkLE&si=bIv4NcuasfjBkima
