Synchronicities: your editor just read a couple thousand words on violets…

[Video]
[5.83]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Post-Produce 101 projects rarely develop the sonic consistency or uniqueness to be truly special. IZ*ONE’s latest single “Violeta,” however, suggests a turn into a promising direction. The aggressive yet luminous synth work is reminiscent of WJSN (Cosmic Girls) or even Lovelyz, especially on the big crescendo in the last third of the track, but the energy and the way everything leads up to the beat drop corresponds to the trend followed by tougher-sounding groups. “La Vie en Rose” was good, but “Violeta” shows a band that’s finally coming into its own.
[7]

David Moore: The frills make all the difference to a hits-its-marks K-pop track, particularly the chunky music box plinks and plunks, but the thing that pushes it just over the edge is the way that they land on “Violeta” (I hear a very faint echo of the “Lolita” of “Moi…Lolita” for some reason) right before the whistle hook that passably substitutes for a proper chorus. 
[7]

Iain Mew: The song is dominated by the squeaky instrumental hook, which could presumably function like the mechanism wheeling each exciting new backing sound into place. That is, if there were any.
[3]

Alfred Soto: I can’t explain why “Violeta” reminds me of Aaliyah’s “Miss U”: sweet, fragrant, pastoral. Yet that beat. Precisely — it’s the wrong kind of steam roll. 
[5]

Ashley Bardhan: I like the movement from the spry verses to the sugary chorus sections that sound like what hummingbirds would write if they could make music. I don’t know if I would ever sit and listen to this song, or be excited to turn to my friends and share this song, but I’m still glad it exists. It’s a pretty seashell on the sand, and I’d step over it as I walked to something else. 
[6]

Iris Xie: In junior high, while hanging out after school, one of my friends dropped a bottle of Ramune soda. It became a flutter of a scene — the fizzy splish-splash that accompanied the bounce-then-shatter of the glass, the sound of that elusive marble quickly rolling away, combined with our exclamations (“Oh no! Are you okay? Where’s the marble? Finally, we can get it now!”) mixed with the squeaky sound of rubber soles on linoleum as me and my friends rushed for napkins. We never found the marble, but that same effervescent energy is here, the snare drums sprinkled like funfetti sprinkles around the girls and their coy hook of “Vio-leh-taa.” K-pop often excels at using each aspect of the song as a way to create constantly shifting dynamics in its soundsphere. This is especially present in the vocal mix in “Violeta,” with contrasts between lower-pitched vocals and louder, higher-pitched ones that play off the drama of how the synths enter into the chorus. The drum machine anchors the frothiness with a necessary weight. These instrumental decisions echo Perfume’s “Everyday,” but I*ZONE improves on it by packing in more instrumental and vocal complexity. “Violeta” bubbles and overflows with its own straightforward giddiness, a fizzy, brief, but elastic experience that sticks in your head.
[7]