- 2025-05-19
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MUSIC
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The Lael Project Releases Lael Summer's Posthumous Song “Insidious”
The Lael Project released the third posthumous single “Insidious” from the late American singer-songwriter Lael Summer on May 16, 2025, in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month.
New York native singer Lael Summer tragically died by suicide in 2017, at the age of 24.
During her brief but impactful career, she released two albums, “Burden To Bear” in 2013 and “Life In Color” in 2015 on True Groove Records.
Written and demoed on her iPhone just weeks before her death, the song is an intimate and unflinching look inside Lael's lifelong battle with depression, suicidality and eating disorders.
Tomás Doncker and James Dellatacoma produced and mixed the track, featuring Lael Summer's raw vocal extracted from that original iPhone demo.
Producer Tomás Doncker said of the song, “We built a track that supports Lael's vision. She already had all of the lyrics when we started writing the tune, and the mysterious and darkly brooding atmosphere was already quite evident. Lael was surely no stranger to intensity as far as her lyrical/melodic choices were concerned - always choosing to approach the subject matter of all her songs head on. Fearlessly.”- Lael Summer's mother and founder of The Lael Project, Marla Mase explained, “'Insidious' is not just a song, it's a call for compassion and a mirror for the millions who struggle with the emotional instability and unreliability that comes with having a mental illness. I believe those struggling with mental health will see themselves in this song. You feel you have it under control and then suddenly you don't. It's back, full force. Lael would call this insidiousness 'the murderer' living in her brain. It helped her personify it, to understand that it was not 'her', it was the illness.”
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She continued, “One of the symptoms of mental illness is to isolate, to make you feel hopeless and defective, a burden, and this song is outing those lies. Lael was not afraid to sing about what she was dealing with, she needed to do it, to express all her fears. She was fearless in that way - brutally honest lyrics about her experiences. She did it for her survival and she did it with the hope that her story would help others recognise themselves, know that they aren't alone, and to seek help.”
She added, “'Insidious' is a hand reaching out through the dark saying 'I hear you, you are not alone'. It's Lael, still helping just one person, maybe more.” - source : Apple Music
