Violet

Love began Violet in mid-1991 on tour, before Pretty on the Inside came out. Its lyrics appear on a flyer for a show at the Jabberjaw club in Los Angeles on 7 August 1991, and she said she finished it in the tour van outside a Detroit sound check. The band played it in Toronto on 1 November 1991, and recorded the first studio version for John Peel at Maida Vale on 19 November 1991. That version was later released on the Ask for It EP in 1995. The album recording was made at Triclops in October 1993.

The song is built on power chords, with Love on clean rhythm guitar and Erlandson on heavily distorted lead. It was the third single from the album, released in 1995, and reached number 29 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. Rolling Stone praised its startling gunshot-guitar chorus. Pitchfork wrote that the song baits the ear with a jangling guitar tone cut from the same cloth as R.E.M. before Schemel churns it into a fury, with Love's bitterness "oxidized into defiance". The video, directed by Mark Seliger and Fred Woodward, was the first to feature Melissa Auf der Maur.