Keys, the host for the night, then walked solemnly to the stage and said softy, “Here we are together, on music’s biggest night, celebrating the artists that do it best, but to be honest with you we’re all feeling crazy sadness right now.”

“We’re literally standing here heartbroken in the house that Kobe Bryant built,” Keys went on to say. Keys then invited members of the group Boyz II Men to the stage and sang part of their elegiac song “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” with them.

Lizzo, a charismatic and outspoken performer who had worked in obscurity for almost a decade before her breakout last year, won three awards, but all in lesser categories. “Truth Hurts,” her breakthrough track, won best pop solo performance, while “Jerome” won traditional R&B performance and the deluxe version of her album “Cuz I Love You” took urban contemporary album.

Lil Nas X, a gleeful master of internet memes, won two for his “country-trap” hybrid “Old Town Road”: best pop duo/group performance and best music video.

Well before Bryant’s death, a degree of anxiety had hung over the Grammys, following the removal just days ago of the head of the Recording Academy, the organization behind the awards — a clash that brought out accusations of vote-rigging and sexual harassment, and criticisms that the academy had been moving too slowly to reach its stated goals of becoming more diverse and inclusive.

Keys seemed to obliquely allude to those issues — and more — in a speech and piano medley near the start of the show. “It’s been a hell of a week, damn,” she said, as she twinkled chords at the keyboard. “This is a serious one. Real talk — there’s a lot going on.”