I Am A Camera

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For the play and film of this name, see Goodbye to Berlin, the novel on which they are based.

"I Am A Camera" is a New Wave song by The Buggles from 1981 of "Video Killed the Radio Star" fame, from their second album; Adventures in Modern Recording. Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes started writing the song before joining up with Yes. A version of the song was released as "Into the Lens" on the Yes album, Drama. When Horn and Downes continued with the new Buggles album, the song was completed as 'I Am A Camera'. In the music video, 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 shown in Picture). 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. Like many of the Buggles videos, it is rare.

The title 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 a play and subsequent film (1955) based on the novel under the name I Am A Camera.