The Band Perry’s 2010 self-titled debut album opened with “You Lie,” an indictment of a fibbing lover. Sixteen years later, vocalist Kimberly Perry returns to the song with an assist from Kaitlin Butts.
The reimagined take, dubbed “You Lie (Forever Version),” pairs two of country music’s most charismatic performers — Perry, the confident arena-level frontwoman and torchbearer for her family band; Butts, the theater kid with a flair for the dramatic. For Butts, the collab is a full-circle moment.
“If you would’ve told teenage me — who was belting ‘You Lie’ in her bedroom over boys who had absolutely no idea I existed — that one day I’d get a text from Kimberly Perry asking me to re-record the song with the Band Perry, I would’ve laughed in your face,” Butts tells RS. “It’s such a wild full-circle moment. That song was part of the soundtrack of growing up for me, and getting to revisit it with one of the voices who made me fall in love with country music is mind-blowing.”
In a statement, Perry said, “This is what it sounds like when girlhood becomes womanhood — same song, same spirit, but now we’ve both lived it enough to sing it like we mean it!”
The Band Perry, led by Kimberly Perry and her husband Johnny Costello, dropped the single “Psychological” earlier this year. During an appearance on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Perry opened up about the changes within the group — her brothers Reid and Neil stepped aside to pursue their own careers — and how she’s weathered the Nashville storm.
“I have at least a half bottle of wine just about every night. It is my guilty pleasure. And when I’m brave enough, I love to Google ‘the Band Perry,’” Perry said. “And the top question is ‘Why did the Band Perry disappear?’ Which I think is kind of cool.”
The group didn’t actually disappear, but they did explore other avenues, including working with Texas producer Beau Bedford on a series of unreleased recordings. The relationship with Bedford stuck, however: He produced the new version of “You Lie.”
