Songfacts®:

• "Liar" is the first single from Envy Of None, the band Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson formed after Neil Peart's passing. Along with the rest of the album, the song bears little resemblance to Rush, which is fine with Lifeson, who wanted to explore different sounds. "Liar" has an industrial influence.
  
  Another big distinction: Envy Of None has a female vocalist/lyricist: Maiah Wynne.
• The song is about the kind of liar who does so with bad intent. It might sound like Maiah Wynne is singing about a failed relationship, but it has a very different inspiration. "I went to jury duty for the first time and had a very chilling interaction with the woman who was on trial," she said in a Songfacts track by track. "So, that was my inspiration for the lyrics to that song."
• Maiah Wynne hadn't joined the band when they started developing the song. They used a different vocalist to try out ideas, but nothing clicked until Wynne got a hold of it. " I love the fact that Maiah's lyrics are about jury duty, and not about some bad relationship with this jerk guy who's lying all the time!" Alex Lifeson told Songfacts. "That's the amazing thing, presenting it to an audience that would have their own impression of what the lyrics are or what a song is. That's a really successful song when it's like that."