This went to number 4 in the United States and it climed up to number 7 in the United Kingdom. One of the oddest titles of the rock era, and there have been some strange ones. Like most Chicago songs this one featured lots of horns. This one is still a favorite of marching bands everywhere. This is a song that seems to have a deep profound meaning. It doesn't. The common assumption is that this is a song about LSD. It's not. There are people that will fight tooth and nail to prove this must be about a drug trip. But it's not. Just another in a long line of 60s and 70s songs that people think are about drugs but they are mistaken. So what is it about? What does it mean? This is actually about the simplest thing a song can be about. It's about trying to write a song., staying up all night struggle to come up with words and lyrics. So how does 25 or 6 to 4 fit in? It's what time it was when he finally finished writing the song. He meant 'its 25 or 26 minutes until 4 AM'. Robert Lamm wrote the song, maybe he can explain it better. "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 4am in the morning when I looked at my watch - I was looking for a line to finish the chorus.
Most songs that were written, especially in the early days, whenever I got them to the band and we started rehearsing them, that's when the songs took shape - once these guys got hold of them. There was definitely a lot of raw material, I thought it was a song when I wrote the words down, I wrote the changes down and I brought the charts to rehearsal, but it wasn't really a song until they all played it." By the way this wasn't the first or last time a song was written about writing a song. Natasha Bedingfield even reached number one with a song about NOT being able to write a song in 2004 with 'These Words'. Feel free to comment below.
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