In 1969, the keyboardist for the Chicago Tansit Authority (that was the bands original name) wrote a song he titled “Twenty-Five or Six to Four”. The song reached number four on the billboard pop charts in 1970.

A side note is the band changed their name from Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to just Chicago when the corporation threatened to sue them,  the corporation has a copyright on their name.

The city of Chicago does not copyright their name so an easy solution presented itself.  But I digress, back to the story of the song which the real point of this post.

Without Meaning

Music with meaningful lyrics is great but for me the lyrics don’t have to have deep meaning for me to enjoy the song.  Which brings me to 25 or 6 to 4 which I always enjoyed and thought was a great message song, just not sure what the message was.

Listening to the radio this morning I enjoyed hearing an interview with Danny Seraphine, one of the bands horn players.  He explained the songs lyrics.

And the answer is

When explained, all is clear, although this is not something I would have guessed.  Robert Lamm was working all night on writing a new song.

At around 25 minutes or 26 minutes to 4 am in the morning  he realized the day was breaking and he was still searching for something to say.

Simply put, the song is about the experience of writing the song.  Who knew?  Rhetorical question of course as lots of people probably knew, I just was not one of the.

Even with this revelation though, still a fabulous song.