CHICAGO - 25 OR 6 TO 4

Released: June 1970

Charted:  UK: #7    US: #4 

"25 or 6 to 4" is a song written by American musician Robert Lamm, one of the founding members of the band Chicago. It was recorded in 1969 for their second album, with Peter Cetera on lead vocals. This song was a huge hit Peaking #4 in the US And #7 in the UK.

Lamm said the song is about trying to write a song in the middle of the night. The song's title is the time at which the song is set: 25 or 26 minutes before 4 AM (twenty-five or [twenty-]six [minutes] to four [o’clock]), i.e. 03:34 or 03:35. Lamm explained on The Chris Isaak Hour: "I was living with a bunch of hippies up above Sunset Strip. One of the advantages of this particular house was that it was in the Hollywood Hills and I could look out over the city late at night. I wanted to try to describe the process of writing the song that I was writing. So, 'waiting for the break of day, searching for something to say, flashing lights against the sky' - there was a neon sign across the city. That song came from the fact that it was 25 or 6 to 4 a.m. in the morning when I looked at my watch - I was looking for a line to finish the chorus.

Although Lamm told Chris Isaak he glanced at his watch for the time while he was writing the song, he told Mix magazine in 2019 he looked at an antique clock that was on the wall of the 1920s bungalow, which explains his confusion about the precise minute. "I couldn't quite tell where the hands of the clock were pointing. It was 25 or 26 minutes before 4 a.m. I didn't expect to keep those words. I expected to replace them with some actual lyrics. But it ended up working out okay," he said.

However there are a lot of unsubstantiated rumors regarding the meaning behind this song's lyrics. A popular rumor is that "6 to 4" was a nickname for LSD, because if you dropped acid at 6 p.m., the effects of the drug would wear off by 4 a.m., 10 hours later.

Recently it can be heard in a scene from the movie “The Flash”.