Award-winning songwriter Dean Pitchford providing the lyrics. The song, re-recorded various times to reflect current music trends, was performed by the show's hosts (with the exception of the 1984–85 season, which was performed by session singer, Deborah Ludwig Davis) at the beginning and end of each program, with the closing theme accompanied by a final routine from the Dancers. History and format overview Year-end Top 40 countdown shows The first episode of the show in January 1980 would become a yearly tradition, as they counted down the Top 50 songs of 1979 in a two-hour television pilot special, called Solid Gold '79, hosted by Dionne Warwick and Glen Campbell. The year end countdown would be reduced to forty songs beginning in 1981 and would be presented every year through 1986. Source material The data featured by Solid Gold came from the weekly pop music chart compiled Radio & Records, a music industry trade newspaper that was responsible for providing data to various chart tracking programs for over 30 years. The difference between the R&R chart and those used by competitors like America's Top 10, which was hosted by Casey Kasem and also launched in 1980, was that only radio airplay was tracked. Kasem's program, which later adopted the Radio & Records chart as its source, and several others (including Kasem's radio counterpart, American Top 40) used the Billboard Hot 100, which also tracked record sales. Daily spinoff In the summer of 1984, the producers of Solid Gold added a daily 30-minute series called Solid Gold Hits to the weekend program. Actor Grant Goodeve presided over a general grouping of the week's hit songs, and a second roster of Solid Gold Dancers was employed for this series; regular Solid Gold Dancer Deborah Jenssen was the principal dancer of this roster. Additional Solid Gold Hits Dancers were Pam Rossi, Cooley Jackson, Raymond Del Barrio, Macarena Gandarillas, Flo Lyle, Debra Johnson, Tricia McFarlane, Wanja Mcyntire and Corky Cortez (appearing with Cooley in the opening dance numbers). Performers/personalities Hosts and announcers Dionne Warwick hosted the first season of Solid Gold, aided by comedian Marty Cohen, with veteran Los Angeles DJ Robert W. Morgan announcing. Dionne Warwick was fired in 1981. After Warwick left the series, singers Andy Gibb and Marilyn McCoo were brought in as co-hosts and puppeteer Wayland Flowers joined the series as a secondary comedic act with his puppet Madame. Gibb left