Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive is a popular song published in 1944. The music was written by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 18th Academy Awards in 1945 after being used in the film Here Comes the Waves.
It is sung in the style of a sermon, and explains that accentuating the positive is key to happiness. In describing his inspiration for the lyric, Mercer told the Pop Chronicles radio documentary “[my] publicity agent … went to hear Father Divine and he had a sermon and his subject was ‘you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.’ And I said ‘Wow, that’s a colorful phrase!’”
Mercer recorded the song, with The Pied Pipers and Paul Weston’s Orchestra, on October 4, 1944, released by Capitol Records. The record first reached the Billboard charts on January 4, 1945, and lasted 13 weeks on the chart, peaking at #2. On the Harlem Hit Parade chart, it went to #4.
On March 25, 2015, it was announced that Mercer’s version would be inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry for the song’s “cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy”.