The Story Behind The Song: Lie By Dream Theater

In many ways songwriting is sort of like giving birth. Many writers liken the pain, struggle and sweat of creating a great song to the same feelings a woman goes through during the “birth process.” It’s difficult enough having one baby, let alone two at once! But that’s what happened to the members of Dream Theater, who accidentally created two songs in one – sort of “giving birth” to “fraternal twins.” That’s how Lie was born. Guitarist John Petrucci said, “We wrote a fairly lengthy song, Mirror with seven string guitars, so the whole song is fairly heavy and chunky, with a sort of vampirish, scary mood to it. In the middle of the song it broke into a different section with a groove. And we all felt, ‘You know that would make a good song on its own.’”

So the band worked on the music for their new “baby.” Former Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore wrote the lyrics, which Petrucci says has a theme about deception – a story similar in thought but with an opposite perspective to the lyrics that drummer Mike Portnoy wrote for its brother song, Mirror. Singer James LaBrie says, “When I sang Lie I felt it was about somebody who was fed up with the deceptions within the world. And there was aggression and anger in the song, so that’s how I sang it.”