Having recently realised that it was “Lyin Eyes” and not “Lion Eyes” I decided to pay attention to the rest of the lyrics of this Eagles song.

City girls just seem to find out early
How to open doors with just a smile
A rich old man
And she won’t have to worry
She’ll dress up all in lace and go in style

Late at night a big old house gets lonely
I guess every form of refuge has its price
And it breaks her heart to think her love is only
Given to a man with hands as cold as ice

So she tells him she must go out for the evening
To comfort an old friend who’s feelin’ down
But he knows where she’s goin’ as she’s leavin’
She is headed for the cheatin’ side of town

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin eyes

On the other side of town a boy is waiting
With fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal
She drives on through the night anticipating
‘Cause he makes her feel the way she used to feel

She rushes to his arms; they fall together
She whispers that it’s only for awhile
She swears that soon she’ll be comin’ back forever
She pulls away and leaves him with a smile

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t now way to hide your lyin’ eyes

She gets up and pours herself a strong one,
And stares out at the stars up in the sky.
Another night, it’s gonna be a long one.
She draws the shade and hangs her head to cry.

She wonders how it ever got this crazy.
She thinks about a boy she knew in school.
Did she get tired or did she just get lazy?
She’s so far gone she feels just like a fool.

My oh my, you sure know how to arrange things.
You set it up so well, so carefully.
Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things?
You’re still the same old girl you used to be.

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
Honey, you can’t hide your lyin’ eyes.

This song is about a fundamental dilemma of life: security and boredom vs. risk and excitement.

The girl has gone for security – “a rich old man” who can give her a life of luxury. But “a big old house gets lonely” and her husband has “hands as cold as ice.” She realizes, in other words, that “every form of refuge has its price.” That price is loneliness, a lack of stimulation, isolation – in short: boredom . So she decides to head for “the cheain side of town”.

Her old husband knows where she’s going because he sees her “lyin eyes.”

When she gets to the “cheatin side of town” she meets the opposite of the old man: “a boy / With fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal.” He represents the realm of risk – the boy, after all, is a dreamer, and dreamers are naive about the dangers of the real world. This is also the realm of excitement, “cause he makes her feel the way she used to feel” before she married. She promises him that she’ll return for good, after she has sorted things out with her husband. But he doesn’t believe she’ll come back to him. He believes that she’ll choose security over excitement and remain with the older, richer man.

He, too, sees this in her “lyin eyes.”

So she’s stuck. She escapes her secure, passionless existence, and enters into the world of risk and passion but finds that she cannot commit to making her home there, so she must return to her elderly husband and discontent.

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Both men discern her inner thoughts in her “lyin eyes.” They can see that she is attempting to deceive. Essentially, paradoxically, I think her lying eyes are actually, therefore, truthful. The girl’s honest desire for excitement shines through when her old husband looks into her eyes. Her honest desire for security shines through when her lover looks into her eyes.

That means that her eyes are both lying and truth-telling. This is not such an odd conclusion as it may at first sound – on a superficial level she is attempting to use her eyes to tell a lie – hence “Lyin Eyes” – while deeper down her eyes betray her true feelings. There is a reason that eyes are known as the window into the soul.

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The girl’s plight is fundamentally an honest one – she truly desires to live both a life of security and a life of excitement. But in her world, they are mutually exclusive. What she realizes in the final verses when  she “hangs her head to cry” is that she can’t have it all. This realization is the true heartbreak of the song.