Kacey Musgraves on Katy Perry, George Strait, and winning ACM album of the year

Kacey Musgraves snagged album of the year at tonight's 49th annual Academy of Country Music Awards for the critically acclaimed  “Same Trailer, Different Park.” Backstage, she exalted in being able to follow her arrow, wherever it points: ” I've been so lucky from day one to just do what I do, follow my gut, my instincts,” she said.

But she's really excited about what's coming next: taping her CMT “Crossroads” special later this month with Katy Perry, with whom she'll be touring this summer. “I'm such a huge Katy Perry fan…she's been such a huge supporter of me and a good friend… I really love the fact that we have a lot of similarities. I feel like a lot of people are like, 'What? That doesn't make any sense, these two teaming up.' But if you look at it, she's super whimsical, and  I can be super whimsical with my light up boots and my cactus, but at the very core, we're songwriters. The lyrics mean the most above all the fireworks.” In the video below, she talks about which covers they're thinking about covering.

As a Texan, she grew up on George Strait and is an uber fan (she interrupted Strait while he was in the press room by yelling at him, “Congratulations, George. I love you!”) and even though she's only 25 and he's 62, she concluded her praise of him backstage by adding, “He's not hard to look at either.”

Musgraves also talks about the tough row that women have in country music right now and that she can hopefully help make it better for the women coming after her, as well as co-writing the single record of the year winner, Miranda Lambert's “Mama's Broken Heart.”