"Where Everybody Knows Your Name", also credited as "Theme from Cheers (Where Everybody Knows Your Name)", is the theme song from the television sitcom Cheers, as well as the debut single for Gary Portnoy. The song was written by Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, and performed by Portnoy in 1982. Shortly after the premiere of Cheers, Portnoy went back into the studio to record a longer version of the song that made the U.S. and British pop charts. The full-length version was made available on Portnoy's 2004 album Keeper. In January 2013, Argentum Records released a five-song EP entitled Cheers: Music from the TV Series which also includes Portnoy's original demo version, as well as several earlier attempts by Portnoy and Angelo at composing the theme. History By 1981, New York songwriter Gary Portnoy had already written songs for Air Supply ("I'll Never Get Enough of You") and Dolly Parton ("Say Goodnight"). One night in the summer of that same year, his friend Judy Hart happened to be seated next to a Broadway producer at dinner. Upon finding out that Hart was working for a music publisher, he asked her if she could recommend someone to compose the score for a new musical he was producing. On a whim, Hart, who had never written a song, approached Portnoy, who had never written for the theater. Together they set out to compose the words and music for the musical named Preppies. In the spring of 1982, Judy, now using her full married name of Judy Hart Angelo, sent a tape of Preppies opening number "People Like Us" to a friend in California, who then passed it on to television producers Glen and Les Charles. Upon hearing it they each felt that with a lyric re-write "People Like Us" would be the perfect theme song for their upcoming NBC sitcom, Cheers. Upon learning that "People Like Us" was legally bound to the musical Preppies, the Charles Brothers asked Portnoy and Hart Angelo to take a shot at composing a theme specifically for Cheers. The song that resulted, "My Kind of People", was somewhat of a reworked version of "People Like Us". It was subsequently rejected. Portnoy and Hart Angelo then wrote and submitted two more potential themes for Cheers. One of them, entitled "Another Day", contained a lyric line "There are times when it's fun to take the long way home" that