Carrie Underwood was the belle of the ball this past Sunday, not only performing on the ACM Awards, but also winning Top Female Vocalist for the third consecutive time and becoming the first solo female in nine years to win Entertainer of the Year! It’s an award that Carrie truly didn’t expect, and she says that four-time Entertainer winner Kenny Chesney was playfully teasing her before the announcement, telling her he was sure she’d won…and when she did win, he couldn’t have been happier for her. “I talked to Kenny quite a bit afterwards, and he’s just so encouraging and such a nice guy and kept tellin’ me how proud he was of me,” Carrie recalls, adding that she’s known Kenny since she toured with him after her American Idol win. “I’ve known him the longest out of any of the other nominees,” she says, “it was a cool thing for him to be so proud.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)

• When Carrie sang her latest hit, “I Told You So,” on the ACM Awards, she wore a gorgeous crimson gown with an enormous skirt that billowed out all around her. It was so large, Carrie says, that it inspired a laugh from the audience as she made her off-camera exit from the stage with an armload of dress! (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• “I Told You So” is the fifth huge single from Carrie’s Carnival Ride album, which includes four straight number-one hits with “Last Name,” “All-American Girl,” “So Small,” and “Just a Dream.”

  Carrie Underwood was truly shocked to win ACM Entertainer of the Year. (:23) (Note: Audio is phone quality.)
“I definitely did not expect it at all, and I mean, for my name to be amongst those names is a victory in itself. And right before, Kenny was messin’ with me, and he’s like, ‘You won…I know you won,’ blah, blah, blah, and so I was just like, ‘Whatever,’ I don’t know, it’s just everything happened so fast it’s kind of hard to now go back and think about it.”

  Carrie Underwood says that Kenny Chesney has been very supportive toward her. (:23) (Note: Audio is phone quality.)
“I talked to Kenny quite a bit afterwards, and he’s just so encouraging and such a nice guy and kept tellin’ me how proud he was of me, ’cause he was there on it, you know, from the beginning, too, ’cause right after Idol, I went on tour with him. So, I’ve known him longest out of any of the other nominees, and you know, it’s just, it was a cool thing for him to be so proud.”

  Carrie Underwood shares an off-camera moment on the logistics of handling her beautiful, but enormous, red dress from the ACM Awards show. (:31) (Note: Audio is phone quality.)
“There were a few people helping, and I actually got a giggle from the audience when the song was over because they were supposed to drop down the piece in front that would, like, cover us, so we could get all of our stuff off stage, they could get everybody else’s stuff on stage, and I could get off stage without people seeing the process that it took to get on and off stage. But the little thing didn’t come down, so I ended up, like, scoopin’ my dress up in front, and everybody just started laughing ’cause I think they were all waiting to see how that was gonna happen.”