Thank you for being a friend.
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidante
And if you threw a party,
invited everyone you knew,
you would see the biggest gift would be from me
and the card attached would say
thank you for being a friend.
Note: The later seasons, as shown on Lifetime, featured a shorter theme song,
without the verse beginning with "and if you threw a party." Instead, it
cuts straight to the final line. This is due to Lifetime's editing.
"Thank You for Being a Friend" is a popular song written by Andrew Gold. He recorded it for his third album,
"All This And Heaven Too", and the single version reached #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978.
The song later got life as the theme song to
The Golden Girls in a version recorded by Cynthia Fee (who is also known for her 1984 duet with Kenny Rogers, "I Don't Want To Know Why"). It was also re-recorded in a more modern, "Reggae Mix" style for the show's spinoff,
The Golden Palace. Thanks
to Wikipedia for the above info.
Gold also did a somewhat melancholy song called "Lonely Boy", from 1976 and the theme to the sitcom Mad About You, called "the Final Frontier".
Andrew Gold is also the son of Marni Nixon (
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0633262/bio), who was the singing voice of Natalie Wood and parts of Rita Moreno in "West Side Story", Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady", Deborah Kerr in "An Affair to Remember" and "The King and I", as well as other well-known musicals. In fact, in one WSS duet between Maria and Anita, Marni is singing both parts.