When the Truth Hurts Too Much, Sometimes a Sweet Lie Is All You Need
Oh, the late 1970s! A time when innocence still had a foothold on the charts, even as disco lights began to spin and punk rock snarled in the shadows. For a certain generation, those years were defined by the poster boys plastered across bedroom walls, and few shone brighter than Shaun Cassidy. Coming from the iconic Cassidy-Jones showbiz dynasty, Shaun burst onto the scene with a wave of irresistible, bubblegum pop. But by 1978, the white-hot teen idol frenzy that had propelled “Da Doo Ron Ron” to the top was beginning its inevitable cool-down. It’s in this transitional moment that we find his track, “Lie To Me.”
Released on August 1, 1978, “Lie To Me” was a deep cut from Shaun Cassidy’s third studio album, Under Wraps. The song, credited to songwriters Bill LaBounty and Jay Senter, was not chosen as a major single—unlike the album’s modest hit “Our Night,” which only peaked at #80 on the US Hot 100. Consequently, “Lie To Me” itself did not achieve a recognizable chart position upon its release. The album it came from, Under Wraps, signaled a turning point, as it barely cracked the top 40 on the US Billboard charts, reaching a peak of #33. This commercial performance suggested that the public’s intense, almost frantic obsession with Shaun as a teen idol was starting to wane, making tracks like “Lie To Me” quieter, more personal finds for the devoted fans who still followed his journey.
The meaning of “Lie To Me” is a poignant, if slightly melodramatic, meditation on the painful necessity of self-deception in the face of heartbreak. It captures that raw, vulnerable moment after a breakup when you know the relationship is truly over, but the reality is simply too crushing to bear. The singer isn’t asking for a huge, sweeping fantasy, but a small, necessary untruth—a momentary reprieve from the finality of loss. It’s about the human need to cling to a shred of hope, even a fabricated one, to keep from completely shattering. The lyrics speak to that universal experience of denial: “Tell me you’ll be back one day,” “Say you still love me”—simple requests for a palatable lie, allowing the broken heart a moment to breathe before facing the irreversible truth.
There isn’t a widely publicized, dramatic story behind it directly involving Shaun Cassidy, as he did not write the song. However, in the context of his career at the time, this track took on a deeper, almost metaphorical resonance for those of us who grew up following his every move. Shaun was the son of Hollywood royalty, Shirley Jones and the brilliant, yet troubled, Jack Cassidy. He was also the younger half-brother of the earlier teen idol David Cassidy. This lineage meant he grew up steeped in a world of performance and public image—a world that, as he would later reflect, often involved a gap between the presented “truth” and the complicated reality behind the scenes. Singing a song about asking for a gentle lie to cope with a hard truth could, for those of us reading into the lyrics of our teen idols, feel like an echo of the very real, and often painful, public/private facade that defined his young life.
For us, the older readers who remember the Tiger Beat centerfolds, the soft-rock melody of “Lie To Me” evokes a bittersweet nostalgia. It’s the sound of a crush fading, the realization that the carefree days of innocence—both ours and his—were coming to an end. It wasn’t the giant hit of his earlier days, but its quiet desperation and sophisticated composition hinted at the more serious artist Shaun Cassidy would strive to become. It’s the soundtrack to packing away the posters, a reflective moment when we realized that even the biggest stars couldn’t escape the pain of real life, and sometimes, a little white lie is the most comforting thing a broken heart can hear.