THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

The Best New Diva Award goes to Ariana Grande. With queen divas like Madonna and Cher resting comfortably on their AARP cards, and current divas seeing lagging sales ( Lady Gaga, Mariah, Katy Perry, Rihanna ) we're primed and ready for a new queen diva to breathe some life into us. It was pretty slim pickings this year for newbies, but Ms. Grande and her triple threat of hit singles brought back the innocence and sheer vocal acrobatics of a young Mariah Carey without the attitude. While her Yours Truly LP may be a bit light, it's a promising start.

The Moose-Turner goes to Katy Perry. While not 100% sold on her yet, my strong opinion of Katy turned a bit this year with the surprisingly refreshing Prism album. Despite the horrid first single, the rest of the album shows a growth and expansion of her sound, and now that she's getting it on the regular from John Mayer, her personality has even softened to a certain likability. Previously see Ke$ha.

The DILF Award for Creative Oldsters is a three-way tie this year between Erasure, Pet Shop Boys and Alison Moyet who all put out some of the finest work of their career, PSB and Yaz's Moyet with back-to-basics fine songwriting and production, and Erasure with a surprisingly creative Christmas LP. Not only are these fine releases for their ages, but they compete right up there with artists half their age.

The Creative Entity of the Year goes to Beyonce. I won't say Artist of the Year since my admiration comes via her overall marketing and not from art. With 40 some odd tracks being rumored to be dumped for lack of focus, and with a tour already booked, some thought B took a rare misstep. Leaking single after single with no clear hit, we all thought she was done. Nope. She was too busy on the surprise Dec. 13, midnight drop of her fifth album BEYONCé which is now setting sales records everywhere. She culled the best of the best of those tracks, secretly shot gorgeous videos for all, then dropped it all as a $16 bundle in iTunes with NO warning. Fans were virtually forced to buy it. No way it could have been leaked early, to savaged by critics. She simply took the Netflix approach and said BOOM, there it is, dropped the mic and walked off stage. Now she's got a tour wrapping up, videos shot for all, a million plus sales in the can and admiration from all. Her job is done, and she can now just sit back and collect the love of her Blue Ivy and Jay. While I don't love this LP, its way better than her last disaster, 4, and the most genius lemons-to-lemonade scenario in music history. Brava!

Come ring in 2014 with Moose's party at Replay benefiting Lambda Legal. See the Moosebox or Replay Facebook pages for information.