Pop songs thrive on human drama. Great music is borne of great emotion, and many bands plumb their feelings and pain to write heartfelt songs.
Unfortunately, lying creates rifts for many couples. While the pain and damage deception causes linger, many musicians turn the raw ache into art.
Songs about lying boyfriends are a pivotal element of music history. Listeners relate to these laments, anthems, and ballads, making them timeless.
We’ve collected the 21 best songs about lying boyfriends to make you feel better about your own partner or to convince you to change your ways.
“Does He Love You?” – Rilo Kiley
Topping our list of songs about being lied to is Rilo Kiley’s 2004 breakout album More Adventurous includes a slew of songs about toxic relationships. “Does He Love You?” tells the story of a man lying on two fronts-first to his wife, then to his girlfriend.
Sung from the mistress’s perspective, the song is a conversation between two best friends involved with the same man. He’s lying to his wife about fidelity, and he lies to his girlfriend about leaving his wife and moving to California.
The song doesn’t condemn the lying boyfriend/spouse. The singer is even-handed and pragmatic; she knows her boyfriend is lying to her, and she doesn’t care because she isn’t invested in the relationship.
“I Thought You Were my Boyfriend”- The Magnetic Fields
“I Thought You Were My Boyfriend” tackles a classic pop song setup. The singer discovers his boyfriend is not exclusive and struggles with the realization.
The song twists the convention by having the singer state that while he knows his boyfriend is lying to him about loving him and his other lovers, he’s decided he doesn’t care. The song suggests the singer himself isn’t terribly honest; although he says he doesn’t care, he laments his partner’s infidelity.
While he claims he has a backlog of guys eager to replace the truant boyfriend, he hasn’t actually left the cad.
The Magnetic Fields included “I Thought You Were my Boyfriend” on their 2004 record i, a concept album where every song starts with the titular letter.
“Beach House” – Carly Rae Jepsen
Poor Carly Rae Jepsen has boy problems. “Beach House,” the second single off her album The Loneliest Time.
The singer is dealing with not one lying boyfriend but several. She’s dating around and finding the scene pretty unpleasant. Carly Rae’s boyfriends lie about things ranging from a secret wife to whether or not they intend to harvest her organs.
“Beach House” is a fun dance song with a wicked sense of humor. While the singer wants to find love, she’s sardonic about her failures. The song considers the various lies early-stage boyfriends tell to deceive their partner into entering a relationship.
“Before He Cheats” – Carrie Underwood
“Before He Cheats” is the ultimate cautionary tale for lying boyfriends. The singer discovers her boyfriend’s blown her off to spend the evening in a dive bar with another woman. Carrie seeks vengeance by destroying his car while he’s in the bar.
“Before He Cheats” is triumphant and cathartic, a classic revenge tale. Its gender politics don’t hold up to scrutiny, however. The singer’s assessment of the other woman is scathing, mean-girl vitriol.
The boyfriend’s a liar, and there’s no reason to assume the girl in the bar has any knowledge of her lover’s girlfriend. Calling the other woman a “tramp” and “white trash” sours an otherwise victorious anthem. Underwood included the hit on her 2006 album Some Hearts.
“The Call” – The Backstreet Boys
“The Call” was an unexpected direction for the squeaky clean Backstreet Boys to take. The lying boyfriend sings the song about his decision to cheat on his girlfriend and how it blew up in his face.
This liar manages a two-front deception. His first lie is the phone call he places to his girlfriend. He tells her that he’s hanging out with his friends, nothing untoward, and definitely not cheating on her.
The upbeat number assures listeners that nothing good came of his lies. His partner’s friend discovers his infidelity, leading his girlfriend to leave him.
The track appears on the Backstreet Boys 2001 record Black & Blue.
“It Wasn’t Me” – Shaggy
Shaggy joyously celebrates the fine art of gaslighting in the hit single “It Wasn’t Me.”
The song’s premise is simple; Rikrok simply can’t stop cheating on his girlfriend. He’s not discreet in his indiscretions with the girl next door, and his partner keeps walking in on him. Shaggy advises denial; the narrator should tell his girlfriend it’s not him who she is looking at, actively cheating on her.
Shaggy gives terrible advice, and Rikrok decides to come clean with his girl and apologize. Shaggy included the hit on his 2000 album Hot Shot.
“Say My Name” – Destiny’s Child
It’s hard to imagine anyone cheating on Beyonce, but that is the central premise of “Say My Name.”
The singer becomes suspicious that her boyfriend refuses to say her name or call her any terms of endearment on the phone. She determines that another woman is in his house, and he is lying to both of them. Beyonce gives her errant mate plenty of opportunities to come clean, but he continues to lie. He tells her he’s alone, but she hears another voice in the background, confirming her worst suspicions.
“Say My Name” appears on Destiny’s Child’s 1999 album The Writing’s on the Wall.
“How Do You Sleep?” – Sam Smith
Sam Smith wrestles with his boyfriend’s ability to continually lie to him in the poignant “How Do You Sleep?”
The singer knows his boyfriend’s been deceiving him. Smith wonders how it’s possible to find rest when lying to someone you love. The song examines the ways toxic relationships separate us from ourselves.
The singer behaves in ways antithetical to his nature. He begins searching his partner’s phone and, upon learning his boyfriend is lying, descends further into behavior he loathes. Smith included “How Do You Sleep?” on his 2019 record, Love Goes.
“The Hardest Thing” – 98 Degrees
The narrator of “The Hardest Thing” is a busy boy. He’s lying to his girlfriend and his mistress.
The singer explains that he’s beginning to feel guilty about lying to his partner. He tells the other woman that he has to leave plans to make the break as clean as possible by telling her he doesn’t love her. He still harbors romantic feelings for her, and the declaration is a lie.
98 Degrees released “The Hardest Thing” at the peak of boy-band mania. The group skewed more R&B than similar bands, and “The Hardest Thing” is a soulful anthem.The song appears on the 1999 album 98 Degrees and Rising.
“You Lie” – Reba McEntire
“You Lie” presents deception as a tragic but noble act of self-sacrifice.
The singer knows her partner stopped loving her. He continues to profess affection because she loves him so much that the truth would devastate her. The singer isn’t angry at her boyfriend. She understands why he’s lying to her and can’t handle living without him.
This song about lies and secrets suggests that the singer’s boyfriend will keep him bound to her for at least a little longer.
The tragic anthem reached number one in both Canada and the United States.
Reba McEntire included “You Lie” on her 1990 album Rumor Has It.
“PSYCHO” – Anne-Marie ft Aitch
Anne-Marie isn’t having any of Aitch’s lies in this sassy pop track. After guessing her boyfriend’s phone password, she stumbles upon all his messages with other women and finds undeniable evidence of his cheating ways. Despite this, Aitch still attempts to defend himself, telling her that she’s got it all twisted.
Anne-Marie wrote the song based on her experience in past relationships with lying boyfriends. Interpolating Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No 5’, she lists the girls that she found in Aitch’s phone and what she knows he’s done with them. Aitch jumped on the track after Anne-Marie posted a demo on TikTok and users said that ‘PSYCHO’ sounded like something he would release.
“Sorry” – Beyoncé
In ‘Sorry’ from Lemonade, Beyoncé describes her experience with uncovering and coming to terms with her partner’s infidelity. After everything he’s put her through, she decides that she won’t apologise for laying it all out on the table and doing whatever she wants. “I ain’t thinking ‘bout you,” she tells him. She also offers some advice for anyone with a lying boyfriend: “Tell him boy, bye.”
This song was written about Beyoncé’s high profile husband Jay-Z and his affair with “Becky with the good hair”, a mysterious figure referenced by Beyoncé at the close of the track.
“Picture To Burn” – Taylor Swift
After finding out that her boyfriend has been lying to her, Swift isn’t wasting time on tears. Instead, she’s putting a revenge plan together that involves going out with all of his friends. Determined that her lying ex is going to feel her wrath, she lists all the things she hates about him and tells him that he never meant that much to her anyway. At the end of the day, she’s moving on to better things, and he’s just another picture to burn.
“traitor” – Olivia Rodrigo
Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend may not have technically cheated on her, but that doesn’t mean he never lied. Whilst still in the relationship, Rodrigo was sadly aware that her boyfriend was talking to another girl but kept quiet so that the relationship didn’t have to end. Now that the relationship is over, she feels betrayed by how quickly her boyfriend was able to move on.
She feels that the speed at which he fell in love again meant that he was lying about ever loving her as much as he said he did.
‘Traitor’ is presumed to be about Joshua Bassett, Rodrigo’s co-star and ex-boyfriend. Famously, speculation circulated online that the events of Sour were inspired by a love triangle between Rodrigo, Basset and a third Disney star, Sabrina Carpenter.
“The Lipstick On His Collar” – Caro Emerald
Jazz-pop singer Caro Emerald processes her boyfriend’s infidelity in this upbeat track. “The lipstick on his collar doesn’t seem to match mine,” she realises as she watches him move through the club. Talking to the barman, she laments the fact that she knows he’ll never change but she wants to stay with him anyway. The trouble is, he’ll keep lying to her over and over again.
“Tell Your Girlfriend” – Rebecca Levy
Rebecca Levy sings from an interesting perspective as she encourages this lying boyfriend to come clean. After reminiscing with her ex-boyfriend turns to hooking up, she tells him that he needs to tell his girlfriend that he’s cheated on her.
If not, Levy will tell the girl herself. She’s astonished to find that the tables have turned in their once toxic relationship, and now she’s the one with the power. She tells him that there’s no choice to make between her and his girlfriend, because she doesn’t want to be with him anyway.
“Liar” – The Cranberries
Dolores O’Riordan just wants the truth in this upbeat song from Irish band The Cranberries. She details all the things she’ll do to get the truth out of him, including fighting him, and asks him to just say what he’s thinking. All she wanted was a different, better kind of relationship, but this man is unable to give it to her. “All you do is lie to me,” she sings sadly.
“Boy’s a liar” – PinkPantheress
PinkPantheress picks herself up and moves on from a lying boyfriend in this upbeat relationship. Speaking to a shallow partner who she finds insincere, she criticises how he never made her feel good enough and was never honest with her about his feelings.
She feels that he only bothered to her way when she was all done up and making herself look like something she wasn’t. She’s done with dishonesty in relationships. “What’s the point in crying? It was never even love,” she shrugs.
“Beautiful Liar” – Beyoncé, Shakira
Two pop powerhouses unite on this duet about a beautiful but attractive lying boyfriend. They lament the fact that despite his bad behaviour, they’ll be the ones left crying in the breakup. “Why are the ones who suffer?” asks Beyoncé. It turns out that the two women were dating the same man and neither knew about the other. Rather than fighting, the two unite to comfort each other and blame the ‘beautiful liar’.
“White Liar” – Miranda Lambert
Lambert confronts her lying boyfriend in this country track, accusing him of telling her constant white lies. He’ll tell her that he walked a strange woman to her car and said goodnight, but she can tell from his face that there’s more to the story. The problem he’s faced with is that they live in a small town and one of Lambert’s friends or relatives is always around to catch him in the act. Lambert reveals a twist at the end of the song: she’s been lying to him as well.
“Gaslighter” – The Chicks
The Chicks sing about a man who’ll tell any lie that he feels will get him ahead, with Natalie Maines driving the story. She followed him to California and listened to him act better than their divorced friends and take anything he could get from showbusiness. As she slowly realised, all his big talk amounted to nothing – he cheated on her, spent her money and continued to lie to and manipulate her. “Boy, that’s exactly why you ain’t coming home,” she sings.
Final Thoughts
Lying boyfriends inspire a wide array of emotions. These songs explore every possible reaction and motivation for a partner’s deception. They stand the test of time because we see something of ourselves in them, either as deceived or deceiver.
Caitlin Devlin is a music, entertainment and lifestyle writer based in London. When she’s not creating playlists for Repeat Replay, she’s reviewing gigs and interviewing artists for Ticketmaster UK and thinking about what her Spotify Wrapped will look like this year.