Into the Lens

"I Am a Camera"
Single by The Buggles
from the album Adventures in Modern Recording
B-side	"Fade Away"
Released	October 1981
Length	4:32
Label	Carrere ZTT
Songwriter(s)	Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn
Producer(s)	Trevor Horn
The Buggles singles chronology
"Elstree" (1980) "I Am a Camera" (1981) "Adventures in Modern Recording" (1982)

The first version of the song was a demo, recorded on a Sunday afternoon when songwriters Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes started working on the second Buggles album in 1980.[3] When they joined Yes, it gained input from other members Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Alan White, and therefore, "Into the Lens" features a more distinctive "prog rock" sound.[3]

When Horn and Downes resumed work on the Buggles album which would become Adventures in Modern Recording, the song was reworked as "I Am a Camera". Trevor Horn said about the two versions:[3]

The song "I Am a Camera" was a Buggles track and we had adapted it into a Yes track. It became "Into the Lens" and, naturally, slightly more overblown. I don't mind "Into the Lens"—the melody's unadulterated while the arrangement's a lot more complicated—but I still prefer The Buggles version. I think Geoffrey's brilliant on the Buggles version.[3]

The two versions feature slightly different lyrics, notably "I will never let you go, and you always let the feelings show" ("Into the Lens") compared to "I will never let you go, if you want to let the feelings show" ("I Am a Camera"). The line "taken in tranquillity" is also absent from the Buggles song, but reappears on the "12" Mix", which was added as a bonus song for ZTT's (Trevor Horn's own label) 2010 re-release of Adventures in Modern Recording. The line "I am a camera" is a quote from Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The full sentence reads, "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." There was also a play (1951) and subsequent film (1955) based on the novel under the name I Am a Camera.

Along with the "On TV" and "Lenny" singles, The Buggles' "I Am a Camera" was re-released by ZTT on iTunes in 2012, including three bonus tracks: the aforementioned "12" Mix" of the song, and two demos both titled "We Can Fly from Here" ("Part I" and "Part II" respectively).[4] The latter two songs would (like the "I Am a Camera" demo) be reworked as Yes songs, and in fact become the basis of Yes' future album, 2011's Fly from Here, which would mark the second time that both Horn and Downes would work with Yes following a departure by Jon Anderson - Downes returning on keyboards for both the album and the tour, but Horn taking the role as producer and offering some backing vocals, but reserving lead vocals for Benoît David. Along with the "12" mix", the B-side, and the two demos also appear on ZTT's 2010 re-release of Adventures in Modern Recording.

In the Netherlands, The Buggles version originally peaked on the Single Top 100 at #46,[5] but reached #11 on the Dutch Top 40.[6] It also reached #45 on the Italian Hit Parade Singles Chart.[7]

The single edit of Yes' own "Into the Lens" was titled "Into the Lens (I Am a Camera)".

In 1985, "I Am a Camera" was covered by Kim Carnes for her album Barking at Airplanes.[8]

In the music video made for "I Am a Camera", during the beginning, there are a pair of Horn's trademark glasses. On one of the lenses is a video and the other is glass. Horn comes out of the video side of the glasses (as illustrated). There are scenes involving Horn singing, broken glasses and opticians' tools. The video is seemingly set in a dollhouse. Towards the end, Horn is seen lying on the floor passed out.[9] On 22 March 2013, Classic Pop Magazine rated the music video a "Classic Video".[10]

Since 1982, few frames from the song are used as a jingle of "music premiere" at Polskie Radio Program III (Polish Radio Three) and as a jingle of new song on their chart, Lista Przebojów Programu Trzeciego.[11]

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
• Into the Lens official video on YouTube