25 or 6 to 4
1970 single by Chicago
"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 July 1969 for their second album, Chicago, with Peter Cetera on lead vocals. Columbia Records released the song as a single in June 1970.
"25 or 6 to 4" peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 6 on the Cash Box Top 100 charts.
Composition
In a 2013 interview, Robert Lamm said he composed "25 or 6 to 4" on a 12-string guitar with only 10 strings. According to Lamm, "It didn't have the two low Es." He wrote the lyrics in one day. The band first rehearsed the song at the Whisky a Go Go.
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 a.m., phrased as, "twenty-five or [twenty-]six [minutes] to four [o’clock]," (i.e. 03:35 or 03:34).
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4030377. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1970 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “25 or 6 to 4” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.