I Am a Camera (song)
| "Into the Lens" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Yes | ||||
| from the album Drama | ||||
| B-side | "Does It Really Happen?" | |||
| Released | 1980 | |||
| Format | 7" | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock | |||
| Length | 8:33 3:47 (single) |
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| Label | Atlantic | |||
| Writer(s) | Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White | |||
| Producer(s) | Yes and Eddie Offord | |||
| Yes singles chronology | ||||
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| "I Am a Camera" | ||||
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| Single by The Buggles | ||||
| from the album Adventures in Modern Recording | ||||
| B-side | "Fade Away" | |||
| Released | October 1981 | |||
| Format | 7", 12" | |||
| Length | 4:32 | |||
| Label |
Carrere ZTT |
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| Writer(s) | Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn | |||
| Producer(s) | Trevor Horn | |||
| The Buggles singles chronology | ||||
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"Into the Lens" is a song written by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes of The Buggles. It was first released as "Into the Lens" on the Yes album Drama in 1980, and the year after on The Buggles album Adventures in Modern Recording as "I Am a Camera". Both versions were also released as singles: "Into the Lens (I Am a Camera)" by Yes in 1980 and "I Am a Camera" in October 1981 by The Buggles (on Carrere Records).
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. 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.
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:
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.
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.
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