The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 17 to 23, 2016)

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Death and Taxes: Notable deaths continue to draw high notice on Wikipedia for another week. And though Glenn Frey's (#1) passing didn't generate nearly as much attention as David Bowie (#1 last week, #4 this week), it is yet another high-profile death leading the chart. And even the pop culture entries are serious, with convict Steven Avery (#3), the subject of the documentary Making a Murderer (#7), riding high for yet another week, and survival epic The Revenant at #2. Isn't it time for another vacuous chart topper we can simply get a laugh from, like twerking?

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of January 17 to 23, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Glenn Frey		1,861,483	The founding member of American rock band the Eagles (#8) died on January 18. Though only about 15% of the whopping 11.7 million views David Bowie got on last week's chart, Frey was a highly successful artist on a much more human scale.
2	The Revenant (2015 film)		1,283,947	Alejandro González Iñárritu's Western survival epic starring Leonardo di Caprio (#23, pictured) continues to be popular.
3	Steven Avery		1,062,963	Avery is an American prisoner who is the subject of the popular new Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer which was released on December 18. (Episode 1 is available free on YouTube.) Avery served 18 years in prison, from 1985–2003, after being framed by the local police for a sexual assault he plainly did not commit. During his subsequent civil lawsuit for compensation, during a period of explosive depositions, he was charged with the murder of a local photographer, and later convicted. The documentary is compelling to watch, and it causing a fair amount of controversy, and thus bringing continuing attention to this article.
4	David Bowie		1,052,526	Contrary to popular belief, chameleons do not change colour to match their surroundings; they change colour to reflect their mood and their relationships with others. From the moment that David Robert Jones adopted the pseudonym David Bowie, he proved himself chameleonic in the true sense. His career was a kaleidoscope of reinventions; not just of music and appearance but of persona, profession and gender identity, each time anticipating the reactions of his audience, and usually forcing them to catch up with him. Fiercely intelligent and unafraid to show it, he also anticipated the effects of technological change, releasing Space Oddity five days before the launch of Apollo 11, and using the Internet to interact with fans years before the age of social media. His work as an actor also frequently ran leaps ahead of audiences, whether as an alien in Nicolas Roeg's initially ill-regarded but now lauded The Man Who Fell To Earth, or as Jareth the Goblin King in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, a critical bomb that would go on to become a fixture of children's video libraries, and earn him an entire new generation of fans. But his death earlier this month at the age of 69 may prove his greatest leap ahead yet; while ill with cancer for the preceding 18 months, he refused to publicise his condition and instead used his last time on Earth to compose Blackstar, one of his best reviewed albums in decades. Just as Bowie lived as art, he died as art, and the video for "Lazarus", the second single from Blackstar, which featured a suddenly aged Bowie blindfolded on a hospital bed, would become an epitaph to the world. Once again, we had to catch up with him, and the shock of his unexpected death shivered across his pan-generational fanbase, pushing Blackstar to #1 in the US album chart, astoundingly for the first time, and giving him not only the highest single-day tally of YouTube VEVO views ever recorded, but also, incidentally, the first ever eight-figure weekly Wikipedia viewcount, with over 11.7 million views on last week's chart.
5	Martin Luther King, Jr.		945,522	The American holiday dedicated to him fell on January 18 this year.
6	Star Wars: The Force Awakens		884,009	The reignition of the Star Wars remains in the Top 10 for another week.
7	Making a Murderer		801,724	See #3.
8	Eagles (band)		782,648	See #1. The Eagles of Death Metal were on the chart in November, and they got their name from this band, as a sarcastic reference. Do people in their 20s listen to the Eagles today? I have no idea. Though wildly popular in their time, their music is also clearly of their time, and did not pretend to be otherwise.
9	Deaths in 2016		684,964	The annual list of deaths is usually fairly consistent in weekly views, but is up again for second week.
10	Suicide Squad (film)		681,863	A superhero film slated for release on August 5 in the United States.
11	Wilbur Scoville		679,521	A Google Doodle celebrated the birthday of the inventor of the Scoville scale, which measures the spiciness of peppers.
12	April Ludgate		655,216	A character played by actress Aubrey Plaza in the television show Parks and Recreation, and the subject of popular Reddit "Today I Learned" thread.
13	Alan Rickman		603,994	Down from #2 and 4.8 million views last week. While Rickman may not have had Bowie's cross-generational hold (he came to stardom relatively late in life, at 42, as Die Hard villain Hans Gruber) his performance as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series made him an unlikely sex god to a million Millennial fangirls. His height (he was 1.85 m tall), aquiline features and distinctive voice (a low, deep rumble often compared to the purr of a cat) made him perhaps the most natural British villain since Christopher Lee, though he always insisted he didn't play villains, but "very interesting people". A true romantic in real life (he remained with his childhood sweetheart until his death) he seldom got the chance to play such roles on film, though he did in such films as Truly, Madly, Deeply and Sense and Sensibility.
14	Bernie Sanders		577,700	Last seen in this report in October, Sanders is running for the Democratic Party nomination for the President in the next election in the United States. He's doing well in polls in the early stages against Hillary Clinton, despite being a rather unlikely top candidate.
15	Stacey Dash		566,218	The American actress and more later news commentator on Fox News Channel would never be on this chart. But then she argued that the BET Awards lied to black people about news regarding the boycotting of the Oscars due to lack of ethnic diversity, and she also called for an end to Black History Month.
16	Donald Trump		554,467	Trump is still at the top of the polls for the Republican Party nomination for United States President. If he manages to win the Iowa caucuses on February 1, there will be fireworks.
17	Adam Driver		542,667	The American actor star in #6 in the villain's role of Kylo Ren.
18	Hugh Glass		536,066	The 18th century American outlaw whose story of survival and revenge became the basis for The Revenant (#2) and the character played by Leonardo di Caprio (#23)
19	Celine Dion		520,217	The beloved Canadian singer saw her husband, René Angélil, and her older brother, Daniel Dion, die within three days of each other. Some journos actually asked her if she planned to sing at the funerals. She said no.
20	Royal Rumble (2016)	N/A	505,501	Last year, Royal Rumble (2015) was #2 for the week. Since this year's event fell on January 24 (the day after this report's time period), it may be back next week.
21	Airlift (film)		489,693	An Indian war thriller film released on January 22. Akshay Kumar stars.
22	Eazy-E		468,784	The founding member of N.W.A., whose death from AIDS at the age of just 31 forms the emotional climax of the 2015 film Straight Outta Compton. Yet the actor Jason Mitchell who portrayed him in the film, was not nominated for an Oscar.
23	Leonardo DiCaprio		459,513	After pushing himself about as far as he can reasonably be expected to go in The Revenant (see #2), the popular actor is building up steam for an Oscar win after a Golden Globe and a handful of critics' awards, and he has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
24	Martin Luther King, Jr. Day		456,870	The third Monday in January is set aside in the US to commemorate the life, death and legacy of the civil rights leader. Many of our younger viewers might be surprised to learn just how recently Americans began celebrating this holiday. It was signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1983, first celebrated in 1986, and only adopted by all 50 states in 2000.
25	René Angélil		456,673	The husband and former manager of Celine Dion (#19) died last week of throat cancer.

Exclusions

This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we also exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (~2% or less) or almost all mobile views (~95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.

Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.