Songfacts®:

• Frontman Ezra Koenig explained the song's meaning to NME: "On one level it's about not lying, but it has this real romantic yearning in it and that one felt like a real important step in the album," he said.
  
  Koenig added: "It's tapping into something older that we haven't done as much. People may think of us as a band that have lots of layers of meaning, and twists and turns in a song - and I'm not saying this doesn't have that - but the first thing you hear is just the simplicity of the music."
• Most of the tracks on Modern Vampires of the City reference at least in part fleeting youth and impending responsibility. On this song we hear Koenig ask:. "I wanna know, does it bother you? The low click of a ticking clock?" He told Q magazine: "There was all this momentum for four years and then, when we stopped touring Contra, suddenly there was time to reflect. I started to feel this weird sense of malaise and all these different thoughts started creeping into my mind. It's not a midlife crisis but it is a bit of space."
  Koenig added that "Don't Lie" is a sequel to the band's more carefree earlier songs "M79" and "White Sky." "Over the course of those three songs," he said, " s--t gets progressively real. There's this last romantic appeal to enjoy the daydreamy world of the city but it's clear that already time is running out. Suddenly it's winter."