Released June 1970 Recorded August 1969 | Format 7" Genre Hard rock, jazz rock | |
B-side "Where Do We Go from Here" Length 4:50 (Album version)
2:53 (Single version) | ||
"25 or 6 to 4" is a song written by the American musician Robert Lamm, one of the founding members of the rock/jazz fusion band Chicago. It was recorded in 1969 for their second album, Chicago, with Peter Cetera on lead vocals. The album was released in January 1970 and the song was edited and released as a single in June of that same year, climbing to number four on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and number seven on the UK Singles Chart. It was the band's first song to reach the top five in the U.S. This recording features an electric guitar solo using a wah-wah pedal by Chicago guitarist Terry Kath, and a lead vocal line in Aeolian mode. It has been included in numerous Chicago compilation albums.
Contents
An updated version of "25 or 6 to 4" was recorded for the 1986 album Chicago 18 with James Pankow listed as co-writer. With the new band member Jason Scheff on lead vocals, the single reached number 48 on the U.S. chart. This version was also used as the B-side for the band's next single in 1986, "Will You Still Love Me?".
Meaning
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. Because of the unique phrasing of the song's title, "25 or 6 to 4" has been incorrectly speculated to be a veiled reference to drug quantities, or a mystical allusion. The 1986 music video for the song references the correct meaning at its beginning. The song was banned in Singapore in 1970 and again in 1986 because of its "alleged allusions to drugs." In 1993, the ban on this song was lifted, along with long-time bans on songs by other artists such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
In what may be a coincidence, the song's writer, Robert Lamm, had recently written and sung another Chicago hit, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", for which this song's title can be seen to serve as an answer.
Covers and parodies
The song has been covered by various artists, including Straitjacket, Local H, Intruder, Bruce Foxton, The Moog Cookbook, Earth, Wind & Fire, Paul Gilbert, Pacifika, Vince Neil Umphrey's McGee and Nick Ingman. Constantine Maroulis released his version of the song as a single in 2011.
For the results night performance of the finale of the ninth season of American Idol, Lee DeWyze performed "25 or 6 to 4" with Chicago.
In 2005, Jonathan Coulton made "When I'm 25 or 64", a mashup of "25 or 6 to 4" with "When I'm Sixty-Four" by The Beatles.
Soundtrack appearances
The song appears as an on-disc track in the video game Rock Band 3 and has been made available as a download for the game/learning software Rocksmith 2014.