The nominations for 58th annual Grammy Awards, though, were pitched as something of a showdown between pop and hip-hop. In certain ways, neither won outright — but both genres' reigning queen and king emerged as winners.

After a long-anticipated battle between Taylor Swift's sturdy, sunny pop songs and Kendrick Lamar's fiercely political and musically expansive hip-hop for top prizes, Swift walked away with the night's biggest prize, Album of the Year — as she noted, becoming the first female artist to win that award twice — along with Best Pop Vocal Album. Together, Swift and Lamar also won Best Video for "Bad Blood."

But although Lamar didn't leave the ceremony with any of the Recording Academy's "big four" prizes (Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year or Best New Artist), he did go home with five statues. His album To Pimp A Butterfly won the first award presented on the telecast, Best Rap Album, while his song "Alright" won Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song. "These Walls," featuring Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat won Best Rap/Sung Collaboration; the fifth Grammy was for his video collaboration with Swift, on her song "Bad Blood."

Hip-hop also took center stage in the win by the rap-fueled musical Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, for Best Musical Theater Album, an award not usually presented during the evening telecast and one for which Miranda rapped his acceptance speech. The show's cast performed Hamilton's opening number from the stage of the Richard Rodgers theater in Manhattan. Kendrick Lamar also gave electrifying performances of his songs "The Blacker the Berry" and "Alright"; together, the Lamar and Hamilton performances were the soul and fire of the telecast.

Other winners included the band Alabama Shakes, who won both Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance for their song "Don't Wanna Fight," while its album Sound & Color won Best Alternative Music Album. Singer The Weeknd won two awards, for Best Urban Contemporary Album (Beauty Behind the Madness) and best R&B performance for "Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)." Pop singer/songwriter Meghan Trainor was named Best New Artist.

Due to the Recording Academy's eligibility requirements, several artists and albums that have enjoyed enormous waves of critical and commercials success won't be under consideration for Grammys until February 2017. For example, on tonight's telecast, singer Adele performed "All I Ask," a song from her new album, 25. Despite its massive commercial success, though, 25 wasn't eligible for Grammy consideration this year; only albums released between Oct. 1, 2014 and Sept. 30, 2015 were considered.

And for the same reasons, much of what is dominating the current cultural conversation — Beyonce's "Formation" video and her performance at the Super Bowl, Kanye West and Rihanna's recent albums — had no chance of making an imprint at this year's awards ceremony.

The telecast's producers tried to inject some currency into the three-and-a-half hours of broadcast: Vocalist Lady Gaga and guitarist/producer Nile Rodgers led a medley tribute to the late David Bowie and his many artistic avatars. Tributes filled most of the last hour of the show's telecast, fulfilling the Academy's long-standing tradition of putting together multi-generational powerhouse nods to deceased artists, in part to pay homage and in part to fill up much of the telecast's long evening. This year's most true-to-Grammy-form was a performance in honor of the late B.B. King, fronted by Bonnie Raitt, Gary Clark Jr. and Chris Stapleton.

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