Forty years ago this weekend, on Saturday Sept. 14, 1985, a new sitcom, The Golden Girls, debuted on NBC. The show was an instant smash, thanks to sharp writing and one of the best casts in TV history. The show was also boosted by a pitch-perfect theme song, Andrew Gold’s “Thank You for Being a Friend.”

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Gold didn’t write the song for the show. He had released it as a single in 1978, when it did moderately well, reaching No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. (While you don’t want to knock a No. 25 hit, that was well below Gold’s 1977 single, “Lonely Boy,” which had reached No

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