In the year with a theme song, I predict we will see even more events with theme songs than ever before.

Sure, they can be a good thing (hearing Waylon Jennings croon “justa good ol’ boys” still brings a tear to my eye), but theme songs can also be annoying, especially if they are inaccurate.

Take this year’s theme song for example. Chances are, no matter where you were between 11:55 p.m. and 12:05 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, you heard Prince’s “1999.”

But what you probably didn’t realize, if you were even capable of thought at the time, was that you were “partying like it’s 1999” a year too early.

You see, the song is actually about New Year’s Eve 1999, the night before the millennium.

Don’t feel too bad about it. Even Prince — or The Artist, or whoever, or whatever he is — is planning to capitalize on the song all year with his seven recently-released remixes.

Warner Bros., who own the original rights to the song, also re-released “1999” a few weeks ago.

I say, if a record company truly wants to make some cash, it should come up with an alternative theme song for the year.

With all of the hype surrounding the Y2K bug, maybe R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World (As We Know It)” would be fitting.

Or you could go with a Clinton theme. Aerosmith’s “Falling In Love (Is Hard On the Knees)” and Mitch Ryder’s “Devil With a Blue Dress On” come to mind.

Hell, why not combine the Clinton/Prince theme and go with “Sign ‘O’ the Times” or even “Gett Off.”

Choosing a theme song for an event is not as easy as 23 positions in a one night stand, however.

Take a simple high school prom, for example. All you really need is a ballad with something about love or looking good in the title.

You figure “Wonderful Tonight” can be used once every four years, so that leaves a mere three theme songs for the prom committee to formulate.

Yet, I still hear of at least one bad prom theme every spring, such as a Des Moines school a few years ago choosing “November Rain.”

OK, let’s examine this one for a moment. You have what would be dubbed by industry types as a “power ballad,” which is basically the nice way of saying Axl Rose cannot sing a love song.

Then there’s the title. Prom is in spring; November is in fall. And rain is usually not associated with romance.

You could even go as far as looking at the video for the song, which is the story of a bride dying on her wedding day, but you shouldn’t have to because the song is way too long to be a prom theme song anyway.

In other related catastrophes, I once heard a story about 30 girls showing up for prom in the same dress for a “Lady In Red” theme.

So aside from accuracy and avoiding Guns ‘N’ Roses, what are the keys to finding a good theme song?

I like to refer to them as the three A’s — attitude, ambiance and kicks ass.

“The Dukes of Hazard” theme song sets a positive attitude from the start (“never meaning no harm”), Jennings’ hillbilly tone creates a perfect ambiance for dazzling Daisy and her counterparts, and it plainly kicks ass, as opposed to, say, the theme song to “Facts of Life.”

“You take the good, you take the bad … blah, blah, blah.”

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Corey Moss is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.