Love Me Back was met with widespread critical acclaim. At
Metacritic, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an
average score of 82, based on 11 reviews. In
Spin magazine,
Maura Johnston found Sullivan "both feisty and classy," while Michael Cragg of
The Guardian said her singing is marked by experience and accommodates each song.
Jon Pareles, writing in
The New York Times, felt that Sullivan sounds "narrow and jagged" on the album, "with more grain and more tears as she applies gospel dynamics to her venting."
BBC Music critic Natalie Shaw called
Love Me Back an "instant and self-assured blast of a record."
New York magazine's Nitsuh Abebe described her voice as "warm, well-textured, and big — authentically, naturally
big," and stated, "the warmth and weight of the songwriting and production live up to the singing." Alex Macpherson of
The Quietus commended Sullivan for "letting [her] ideas run riot while staying true to genre values" on the "most creative R&B album of the year." In his review for
MSN Music,
Robert Christgau felt that the songwriting is "a big extra difference maker, with enough pop moves to lighten the overall mood" amid "the soulful melodrama." He believed Sullivan role-plays "with unflinching intelligence" on each song and, although the lyrics could be based on personal history, "it's simpler just to wish every pro was such an astute student of the female condition." Some reviewers were less receptive. Jon Dolan of
Rolling Stone expressed ambivalence about Sullivan's decision to play "a little nicer, adhering to the
Mary J. Blige school of gritty, nuanced
hip-hop soul."
Slant Magazines Sal Cinquemani felt that the album "fails to reprise many of its predecessor's themes or explore any overarching new ones." Margaret Wappler of the
Los Angeles Times said that Sullivan "walks herself to the precipice of emotion without falling off," but lamented what she believed to be not enough "experimentation." == Commercial performance ==