Debra Rae Cohen, writing in The New York Times, said that the album's songs ``dwell on the underlying truths and unadmitted paradoxes of love, of independence, and the area where they overlap and struggle'', that Armatrading ``shows a new control in her arrangements'', the album being ``one more step in Miss Armatrading's continual journey'' and that The Key should help her to ``become a household name''.
Debra Rae Cohen
Armatrading