“Lyin’ To Myself” is the sound of pride trying to stand tall while the heart quietly collapses—an intimate confession dressed up as a brave face.
In David Cassidy’s later catalog, “Lyin’ To Myself” lands with a particular kind of sting: not the dramatic sting of a breakup that’s still exploding, but the slower, more private ache of a breakup that has already happened—and is now echoing through the rooms of your everyday life. It’s a song about the stories we tell ourselves to get through the night, the small lies we repeat until they almost start to sound like truth. Almost.
Released in 1990 as the featured single from his self-titled comeback album David Cassidy (issued on Enigma Records), the track marked a real return to the American charts after a long gap. The album itself was his first U.S. studio album in roughly 14 years, and it reached No. 136 on the Billboard album chart—modest on paper, but meaningful as a public re-entry. Yet it was “Lyin’ To Myself” that carried the emotional headline: a mature, adult-pop confession that didn’t need nostalgia to be effective.
The song was written by David Cassidy and Sue Shifrin, a detail that matters because it frames the performance as something personal rather than merely interpretive. There’s an unmistakable authenticity in the way the lyric moves—like someone who’s already argued with themselves for hours and is now too tired to keep pretending it’s fine. The narrator insists he’s unhurt, that the other person “barely left a scratch,” but every line betrays him. That contradiction—the mouth boasting while the heart confesses—is the whole dramatic engine of the song.
Chart-wise, “Lyin’ To Myself” reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Cassidy’s first Hot 100 Top 40 hit in 18 years. It also found traction on adult-leaning radio, with reporting that includes No. 20 on Adult Contemporary (Radio & Records) alongside its pop momentum. Just as telling as the peak is the arc: the single debuted on the Hot 100 on September 22, 1990, later reaching its peak on November 17, 1990, with a chart run measured in weeks rather than days—the mark of a song that grows because people keep returning to it.
Behind the release, there’s a small, poignant footnote that fits the song’s theme perfectly: the single’s B-side, “I’ll Believe You Again,” was also written by Cassidy and Shifrin, and it wasn’t included on the album—almost like a second unsent letter kept in the pocket. Even the era’s formats tell a story of transition: the U.S. release was issued chiefly as a cassette single, a detail that now feels like an artifact of the time—music you could carry, rewind, replay, and wear thin with repetition, the way you replay a memory you can’t stop touching.
But numbers and formats only explain where the song went—not what it does. What “Lyin’ To Myself” does, quietly and devastatingly, is capture the moment a person realizes that pride is not the same thing as healing. The narrator’s posture is upright, almost swaggering, yet the emotional truth keeps seeping through the cracks: “every night,” “nothing’s been right.” The lies aren’t meant to deceive the world; they’re meant to numb the self. And that’s why the song still lands—because it understands that heartbreak isn’t always weeping into a pillow. Sometimes it’s staring into the dark, rehearsing courage you don’t fully possess yet.
In David Cassidy’s voice—older, steadier, less interested in sparkle—“Lyin’ To Myself” becomes a late-night mirror. It doesn’t ask you to admire him; it asks you to recognize yourself. And when the chorus returns, again and again, it doesn’t feel repetitive—it feels inevitable, like the mind circling the same wound until morning arrives.
That is the song’s lasting meaning: the bravest honesty sometimes begins as a lie you can no longer maintain. “Lyin’ To Myself” is the moment the mask starts to slip—and the truth, tender and undeniable, finally starts to sing.