Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune

The album was inspired by Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak.[4] After Swamp Dogg and MoogStar recorded a rough version of the album, Ryan Olson and Justin Vernon spent several years "refining, fine-tuning, and deconstructing" these recordings.[5] The album includes the cover versions of "Answer Me, My Love"[6] and "Star Dust".[7] In a 2018 interview with Los Angeles Times, Swamp Dogg said, "It's the best thing I've done since the '70s."[8]

Music videos were created for "I'll Pretend",[9] "Lonely",[10] "Sex with Your Ex",[11] and "Star Dust".[12]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	74/100[13]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[14]
Pitchfork	7.3/10[15]
PopMatters	[16]
Rolling Stone	[17]

At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 74, based on 8 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[13]

Mark Deming of AllMusic wrote, "with Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune, Swamp Dogg takes a very deep dive into the electronic side of contemporary pop, hip-hop, and R&B, and he predictably pushes it to the wall."[14] Elias Leight of Rolling Stone wrote, "On Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune's best songs, [Ryan] Olson's synth-heavy backdrops evoke the late Eighties, landing somewhere between early Chicago house music and twitchy hip-hop."[17] Jon Pareles of The New York Times commented that "Swamp Dogg sets off into a bizarre, unsettled realm of computer-manipulated vocals and surreal, anything-can-happen electronic backdrops."[18] Stephen M. Deusner of Pitchfork wrote, "The experiment succeeds because Swamp Dogg delivers on all three aspects of his album title: the ecstasies of love, the misery of loss, and the way Auto-Tune can be used to magnify those feelings."[15]

Mojo placed it at number 56 on the "Top 75 Albums of 2018" list.[19]

Credits adapted from liner notes.[20]

• Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune at Bandcamp
• Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune at Discogs (list of releases)