In taking album of the year for “Midnights,” Swift became the first artist to win the Grammys’ top prize four times, beating a trio of male legends — Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon — who had three.

During the show, held in a rainy Los Angeles, Cyrus won the first two Grammys of her career for her retro hit “Flowers,” taking record of the year and pop vocal album. Eilish and her brother Finneas took song of the year as the writers of “What Was I Made For?,” a dreamy but haunting meditation from the “Barbie” soundtrack. Other highlights included:

• As part of an expanded “in memoriam” segment lasting more than 20 minutes, Stevie Wonder honored Tony Bennett, Annie Lennox paid tribute to Sinéad O’Connor and Fantasia Barrino-Taylor (introduced by Oprah Winfrey) sang “Proud Mary” in honor of Tina Turner.

• Jay-Z called out the Grammys’ failure to recognize his wife, Beyoncé, for album of the year, and U2 beamed in from their residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

• Perhaps the most emotionally powerful moments were Mitchell, 80, in her first Grammy performance, and Chapman, in an extremely rare public appearance, joining Luke Combs for a tender and uplifting performance of her 1988 song “Fast Car.”

“Those who have been blessed enough to be here,” she went on, “must never take for granted the tremendous love and joy that music brings to our lives and to people all around the world.”

Dion, 55, first announced over a year ago that she has a condition called stiff person syndrome, which causes progressive stiffness in the body and severe muscle spasms, leading her to cancel a scheduled world tour. A five-time Grammy winner — including album of the year in 1997 — Dion has maintained a legion of fans around the world, and before the diagnosis, she was an active performer, delivering soaring hits such as “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On” alongside her newer music.

Last week, Dion announced a documentary following her battle against the disorder. Dion indicated in the announcement that she was aiming to return to singing, saying in a statement, “As the road to resuming my performing career continues, I have realized how much I have missed it, of being able to see my fans.”

“Midnights,” Swift’s most recent LP of new material, beat out entries from SZA, Olivia Rodrigo, boygenius, Lana Del Rey, Miley Cyrus, Jon Batiste and Janelle Monáe to take the Grammys’ top album prize on Sunday. It was her second win of the night.

Earlier in the night, as she accepted the Grammy for best pop vocal album for “Midnights,” Taylor Swift announced that she would be releasing her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on April 19.

It was Swift’s sixth nomination for the prize, and fourth win, after her previous victories for “Fearless” in 2010, “1989” in 2016, and “Folklore” in 2020. With her latest win, she moves past three beloved stars who had each won the category three times: Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon.

In 2014, Swift’s “Red” lost the award to Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories,” and in 2022 “Evermore” lost to Batiste’s “We Are.”

Last year, Beyoncé won her 32nd Grammy, more than any other artist in history. (Take that, Quincy Jones and Sir Georg Solti!) With 14 lifetime wins so far, Swift would need another 18 to match Beyoncé.

During a performance of “Flowers” at the ceremony, Cyrus ad-libbed several times, shouting, “Don’t act like you don’t know this song!” and “I just won my first Grammy!”

Cyrus bested nominees from several other prominent female stars for record of the year, including Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” and SZA’s “Kill Bill.”

Monét was up against nominees from many styles and backgrounds, including the category’s oldest nominee in 25 years, the rapper turned country singer Jelly Roll, 39. Another prominent competitor was Ice Spice, the Bronx drill-meets-pop rapper whose cultural ubiquity last year extended to a Taylor Swift collaboration and a “Barbie” soundtrack appearance. The other nominees in the category were the pop-folkie Noah Kahan, the British dance producer Fred again.., the R&B singer Coco Jones, the rootsy married duo the War and Treaty, and the singer Gracie Abrams, who opened for Swift on the Eras Tour.

Monét was nominated for seven Grammys at the 2024 awards, tied for second-most overall. Her full-length debut, “Jaguar II,” won for best R&B album and for best engineered album, non-classical.

“On My Mama,” the album’s third single, was up for record of the year as well as best R&B song. From the same album, “How Does It Make You Feel” was a nominee for best R&B performance, while “Hollywood,” a collaboration with Earth, Wind & Fire, scored a nod for best traditional R&B performance. “Hollywood” also features Monét’s daughter, Hazel, who at 2 years old became the youngest Grammy nominee ever.

Beyond the Grammy accolades for Monét, her longtime collaborator and “Jaguar II” producer Dernst Emile II, known as D’Mile, also got his second straight nomination for producer of the year, non-classical. D’Mile has won five Grammys, including record of the year and song of the year in 2022 for his contributions to Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open” and song of the year in 2021 for H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe.”

Monét came into the 2024 Grammy season with three previous nominations for her work as a songwriter. In 2020, her Grande tunesmithing landed nominations for album of the year for “Thank U, Next” and record of the year for “7 Rings,” while in 2021 her work with Chloe x Halle was up for best R&B song for “Do It.”

“I think my entire story has been leading up to this moment,” Monét told The New York Times in November after learning she’d earned seven nominations. “I felt like an underdog for so long.”

He added, “We want you to get it right — at least get it close to right.”

Jay-Z also referred to Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s boycott of the 1989 Grammys because the rap category was not televised at the time. He noted that he had boycotted the show when DMX released two No. 1 albums but was not nominated.

“Some of you may get robbed,” he said, adding, “Some of you don’t belong in the category.”

He also conceded that the process of awarding Grammys is subjective. “It’s music and it’s opinion based,” he said.

Jay-Z made the remarks during his acceptance speech for the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, which recognizes personal and professional achievements in the music industry.

Through his record label, Roc Nation, Jay-Z has advocated social justice causes, particularly for racial equality in the United States. In 2022, he convened an inaugural summit for social justice leaders to meet in New York to raise awareness about racial justice and policy.

He has also served as an executive producer on two docuseries about the killings of Black Americans: “Time: The Kalief Browder Story” and “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story.” When George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police in 2020, Jay-Z, through Roc Nation, took out full-page ads in major newspapers that quoted a passage from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 speech in Selma, Ala.

Carlile, one of Mitchell’s most high-profile champions, is largely responsible for bringing her hero back to the stage, and she introduced Mitchell, who earlier won the Grammy for best folk album for “Joni Mitchell at Newport.” Nine years ago, Mitchell had an aneurysm and largely vanished from the public eye; her legions of fans feared that her singing days were complete.

But the writer and unmistakable soprano behind classics like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You” was not finished. She made a surprise appearance at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival alongside Carlile, as well as musicians including Wynonna Judd and Marcus Mumford.

Mitchell followed that performance with an almost three-hour set at Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon Festival in George, Wash., last spring. (Two more performances from Joni Mitchell & the Joni Jam are scheduled for October at the Hollywood Bowl.) “To hear Mitchell hit certain notes again in that inimitable voice was like glimpsing, in the wild, a magnificent bird long feared to have gone extinct,” Lindsay Zoladz wrote in a New York Times review of the Washington show.

Mitchell’s recording career, which began in the 1960s, has included her early folk music, the autofiction of her classic albums “Blue” and “Court and Spark,” and the jazz that followed. Decades later, in 1996, Mitchell, then 52, won the Grammys for best pop album and best recording package for “Turbulent Indigo,” her 15th release. “I’ve been contemplating whether to quit music and go into painting, and perhaps I will now,” she said that night.

Swift, who was nominated alongside her co-writer Jack Antonoff, was competing with the writers behind SZA’s “Kill Bill,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire,” Lana Del Rey’s “A&W,” Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers,” Jon Batiste’s “Worship” and Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” another song from the “Barbie” soundtrack.

That Swift has still never taken the song of the year prize remains one of the mysteries of the modern Grammys. She would seem to be a perfect candidate for the prize: an intentional and famously personal writer, serious and respectful of the craft, both an innovator and a traditionalist. The role of songwriter has been key to her identity as an artist since the beginning.

And she has clearly been a Grammy favorite, at least in one other important category: album of the year. She has accepted that prize three times, which ties her with no less than Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon for the record.

Yet song of the year keeps slipping away from her, in hit after epochal hit. In 2010, “You Belong With Me” lost to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Five years later, “Shake It Off” fell to Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me.” In 2016, “Blank Space” went up against Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud.” Guess which won? In 2020, “Lover” gave way to Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” The following year, “Cardigan” lost to H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe.” And last year, her extended remake “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” wilted before Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That.”

For an artist so associated with winning, song of the year has represented Swift’s most egregious and puzzling losing streak.