The Key is the eighth studio album by the British singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading, released on 28 February 1983 by A&M Records (AMLX64912). The album was recorded at Townhouse Studios in Shepherd's Bush, London; Polar Studios in Stockholm and also in New York.

The album spawned the single "Drop the Pilot", which became one of Armatrading's biggest hits, reaching number 11 in the UK Singles Chart over a 10-week stay. It also quickly became a staple of Armatrading's live performances and has featured on many of her compilation albums. Armatrading and her backing band also performed the song on Top of the Pops in early 1983.

Steve Lillywhite was commissioned to produce the album; however, A&M Records judged the album to be not commercial enough and asked Armatrading to come up with some additional, more commercial, material. She went away and wrote the tracks "Drop the Pilot" and "What Do Boys Dream", both of which were produced separately in New York by Val Garay. These two tracks therefore used a completely different set of musicians, which serves to explain the length of the personnel list on this album. Armatrading described her process of song creation, from writing to final recording, at the time of The Key:

It takes me very little time to write the song. Ten, fifteen minutes at the most. But to arrange the song, I need to take all day. The song is written with whatever rhythm I've come up with, and I put the arrangement on top of that. I can keep it a little more to what I think it should be than if I allowed somebody else to do it. I sit at home with my little Portastudio, and I work up the bass part, record it; work up the guitar part, record that; the string part, whatever. Put it all down. I play the tape to the musicians so they hear what's happening, and we do it like that. Steve [Lillywhite] obviously has his sound, which is why I work with him: I like his drum sound, his guitar sound, all that stuff.

Armatrading draws on a variety of musical styles for this album, from Stax style brass, rhythm and blues and punk, as well as the rock guitar of Adrian Belew, who had played with David Bowie on Lodger.

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