We have spoken at length about Puerto Rican, London-based songstress Ivelisse del Carmen. Yet, we never took a wider look at her relationship with the music medium and her sudden return in early 2025. As the reader might recall, the talented artist started her current release spell in February of that year with ‘Las Mariposas’, instantly catching our attention thanks to the project’s evocative blend of Latin influences and sweet pop melodism. One question remains… where has Ivelisse been before that?
We are now told by Ivelisse herself about the years of absence from the music industry, an introspective and chaotic period riddled with burnout and mental health challenges. The creative fire that propels del Carmen never truly went away, and eventually she managed to rekindle it. ‘Before I’m Done’ is the song that symbolises that very same return, the one written after the aforementioned long period of absence.
More specifically, the song draws its vulnerable and nuanced imagery from John Everett Millais’ painting Ophelia. The contrast between the stillness of Ophelia’s body and the movement of the natural world around her creates an intoxicating dualism, one that forces listeners to embrace chaos and stillness at once. As del Carmen explains: “I wasn’t interested in referencing the painting literally. It was about the feeling it holds. The calm and the unraveling happening at the same time. That’s what returning to music felt like for me.”
Recommended! Discover ‘Before I’m Done’ now: