Purple

The unexpected death of Prince on April 20 leads the chart with the highest view count in this chart's history, breaking the record that was just set this January by the passing of David Bowie. Outside the Top 10, six additional slots are taken up by Prince-related topics, but death dominated the Top 10 generally, with wrestler Chyna at #2, British comedian Victoria Wood at #7, American actress Doris Roberts at #8, and the ever popular Deaths in 2016 rising to #5 this week.

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see here.

For the week of April 17 to 23, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages (WP:5000), were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Prince (musician)		13,064,933		Well, although the rational side of our human brains know that the recent spate of deaths of musical icons in 2016 must be coincidental, it sure doesn't feel that way to the emotional side of our brain looking to make sense of things. The news of the completely unexpected death of Prince at age 57, a highly successful artist who first became famous in the 1980s, and whose talent was quite widely acknowledged, spread throughout the internet like wildfire. It was only in January of this year that the death of David Bowie yielded the first entry in this chart's history to hit eight figures – with 11.7 million views. Prince's death has now exceeded that record, racking up over 13 million views – and in only three days, as he died on Thursday. Bowie died on a Sunday, so his 11.7 million views were obtained over a full seven days. Does this mean that Prince was more beloved than Bowie? How does one judge?
2	Chyna		2,121,679		The lead sentence of our article on Chyna says she "was an American professional wrestler, actress, glamour model, bodybuilder, English teacher and pornographic film actress." She rose to fame on the wrestling part, though. She was found dead in her California home on April 20, at the age of 46.
3	Harriet Tubman		1,358,526		Last week it was announced that one of the most famous women in American history would be replacing President Andrew Jackson (#16) on the United States twenty-dollar bill. The new bill is expected to be unveiled in 2020. When the idea of putting a woman on a U.S. bill first arose last year, it was floated that the target was the ten-dollar bill, which features Alexander Hamilton. However, in one of those odd turns of history that will certainly generate many Reddit "Today I Learned" threads in the future, the success of the musical Hamilton was credited for the change in plans.
4	420 (cannabis culture)		1,021,596		This curious "holiday", which falls on April 20 (for obvious reasons) refers to the mysterious number 420 and its long association with marijuana usage. While it may not quite be to cannabis what Oktoberfest is to beer, it no doubt aspires to be. And it returns to the top 5 as it has in previous years. We also note the article remains, every year, far too laid back to improve any further from Start Class.
5	Deaths in 2016		953,110		A big jump this week due to #1. And with Prince's death only the latest in a streak of high profile celebrity deaths, we are now seeing many articles asking "why" there have been so many celebrity deaths in 2016. Setting aside the coincidental spikes that can always occur, the most likely answer comes from BBC obituary editor Nick Serpell. He argues that there are more famous people now, starting from the 1960s, and these people are now in the 60s and 70s and naturally starting to die. If we extrapolate from that, you could argue that social media has boosted the number of famous people once again in the past ten years. Does that mean that in 50 years this chart will be inundated with the deaths of people like the Numa Numa guy, David After Dentist and Damn Daniel? Stay tuned to find out.
6	The Jungle Book (2016 film)		939,876		Down from #2, but only 100,000 views down from last week. This American film based on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, previously adapted to screen in a 1967 animated film, had its world premiere on April 4. It was released in 15 countries on April 8, and debuted in the US on April 15 to a stellar $103 million weekend and rapturous reviews (the film currently has a 94% RT rating). Despite being described as a "live-action reboot", the film is really more of a CGI cartoon, with nearly everything onscreen except the lead child actor Neel Sethi composed of computer graphics.
7	Victoria Wood		927,781		This English commedienne and five-time BAFTA-winning actress died of cancer on April 20, 2016. Much of her humour was grounded in everyday life, and included references to popular British media and brand names of quintessentially British products, which made her fame relatively exclusive to Britain. And while I am embarrassed to admit it, this made me google whether Morrissey liked her. And indeed he did, along with many many others.
8	Doris Roberts		897,883		This American actress died on April 17, best known for her role playing Marie Barone in the American sitcom Everyone Loves Raymond. (Morrissey had nothing to say about her death, though she received many fine tributes from others.)
9	Fan (film)		892,651		On for another week, with a jump of over 150,000 views over last week. This Bollywood hybrid of The Fan and Single White Female, in which a Bollywood star and an obsessed lookalike (both played by Shah Rukh Khan (pictured)) gradually become entangled in a game of revenge, was made on a relatively hefty budget of ₹850 million ($13 million). It has now earned more than ₹1.72 billion ($26 million).
10	William Shakespeare		881,813		Yes, it is yet ANOTHER celebrity death. Zounds! However, this one occurred four hundred years ago this week, and was celebrated by a Google Doodle, among many other mentions in the press.

Just missing the WP:TOP25: Apollonia Kotero (#26, Prince-related); Prince albums discography (#27); Vanity (singer) (#28, Prince-related); List of The Flash (2014 TV series) episodes (#29); List of Bollywood films of 2016 (#30)