At the end of the day, I’m annoyed.

I can’t say that I was aware of this trend, but The Voice has brought a currently omnipresent cliché to my attention: “at the end of the day.” In nearly every round, one of the sweet little girls about to go up for the battle rounds would highly praise her competitor and close with “but at the end of the day, only one can go on to the live performances” or “but at the end of the day, this is a competition, and I want to win” or something along those lines. Cee Lo Green used it at least three times, Christina Aguilera four times in one episode, according to my count. The equally annoying cousin of this expression that was just as gratingly overused for a while would be “in the final analysis.”

If I were to rephrase that in my own language, I’d be more likely to use a simpler expression: “but after all, this is a competition, and I want to win.” I have become such a fan of simplicity in my editing career. You will end up sounding more original, less like a trend-follower and more like you make your own trends, if you speak simply and skip the clichés that are in everyone’s mouths. By episode 5 of The Voice, I had started finishing the contestants’ unbelievable predictable sentences. Since the group of people on this show is really not homogeneous, I must believe that this trend has its teeth pretty deeply in our pop culture. Let’s hope it’s fleeting or that this very popular show will make everyone very tired of it.