The
Allmusic review by Thom Jurek stated "Of all the records in Lage's catalog,
Love Hurts sounds like it was the most fun to make; in turn, it is a complete delight for listeners". On
All About Jazz, Chris Mosey said "Julian Lage is a tremendously talented acoustic guitarist and by all accounts a polite, mild mannered kind of guy. Though this might not be the whole story. The cover picture of his album is of twenty used matches, which is thought to refer to his worries of becoming burnt-out after being hailed as a child prodigy then burdened with the lofty expectations of his admirers ... what he does best is to revisit and transform melancholy old pop numbers. His arrangement of the title track, an Everly Brothers' hit from 1965, is quite stunning and his playing of it makes you forget the number's lachrymose country origins". Referring to the way the album included covers of both pop and jazz songs, Suzanne Lorge wrote in
DownBeat “On the surface, these [songs] all might not have much to communicate to each other. But Lage’s incisive musicality and clean fretwork go a long way to bridging aesthetic divides. His two originals (“In Circles" and “Lullaby") are the most inclusive selections on the recording, borrowing from nearly everything else and signaling the guitarist’s compositional intent: to build musical bridges firmly rooted in place, but standing outside of time and genre." In a long form interview with Lage for
JazzTimes, James Rotondi wrote of the album “Eclectic though it may be, the material on Love Hurts reflects Lage’s interest in finding single vehicles through which to express a total vision." ==Track listing==