“A Tender Lie”
Restless Heart
Written by Randy Sharp
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
December 2, 1988
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
December 17, 1988
This is about as good as the eighties Restless Heart sound gets, at least on a No. 1 record.
Big Dreams in a Small Town features the captivating title track, and their next album featured the gorgeous “Dancy’s Dream,” possibly the two best singles of the first Larry Stewart era. Neither of those went to No. 1, but they did score their final chart-topper in 1990 with the title track to Fast Movin’ Train.
Truth be told, my favorite Restless Heart album was the post-Stewart Big Iron Horses. I’m a nineties guy, after all. But “A Tender Lie” is the Restless Heart eighties formula executed at its highest level, powered by a strong ballad that asks a departing lover to fake it until she’s gone. The breakup is hard enough, so please go easy on me.
The harmonies are still too glossy and technically perfect, at the expense of the emotion needed to fully deliver the impact of the chorus. So this works much better on the verses for me.
It’s so disappointing to me that “You Can Depend On Me” is an anomaly in their catalog, because that twangy hit is easily their best Stewart-led single and it should have been a No. 1 hit.
“A Tender Lie” gets a B+.
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I think it’s safe to say I’m the biggest Restless Heart champion among the regulars on this site but I’ve always found this one to be a snoozer. It’s pleasant enough but deeply unmemorable and I struggle to come up with much to say about it, positive or negative. And I’m a bit sore that it made the penthouse while the vastly superior follow-up single didn’t….
I knew “Big Dreams in a Small Town” fell short of #1 on Billboard but for the sake of this feature, I’d hoped Radio and Records would come through. Knowing now that it didn’t, I’m curious why Restless Heart’s streak of chart-toppers ended with the best song of their career. Perhaps like Ronnie Milsap’s “Stranger in My House”, it was a little ahead of its time for conservative country radio, its rock sensibilities pushing the envelope more than what some programmers were willing to accept. Or maybe country audiences just didn’t like it as much as I did. Either way, “Big Dreams” was a masterclass of circle of life storytelling with bombastic guitar flourishes and harmonies so tight you could set your watch by them. For as much as country music moved in this direction generally in the decade to come, I don’t know if anybody did it as well as Restless Heart did on “Big Dreams”. If “Big Dreams” had made it to #1, it would have been an “A+” for me. Alas, I didn’t, so I’ll have to give the consolation grade to “A Tender Lie”.
Grade: C
…they really lived up to their band name with their material.
I hate sounding like a contrarian with every Restless Heart hit, but I really enjoy this one.
Sort of an ’80s’ version of the delusional despair of Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times.”
I love the pleading tenderness of the lead vocals, the fullness of the harmonies, and the desperate mandolin playing.