Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/February 10 to 16, 2019

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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (February 10 to 16, 2019)

Prepared with commentary by Stormy clouds

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Hallmark Awards

This was not the most fun report of all time to compile for me on a personal note, given how heavily laden it is with topics that I am not remotely intrigued by - specifically, its focus on the superficial and cynical "love" propagated by the purveyors of gift cards and boxed chocolates, and its simultaneous fascination with the Grammys, which I feel is the least interesting of the EGOT quartet. I am reluctant to say that music is dead, but a quick glance at the most popular artists with the regal readers of Wikipedia does little to disspell this sentiment. Nonetheless, courtesy of Google and Gunnm, there are some welcome distractions. All I can really say, truthfully, is that this is Report. Don't catch your attention slippin' now.

Thus, for the week of February 10 to 16, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	About
1	Valentine's Day		1,415,624		I can dim the lights and sing you songs full of sad things. We can do the tango just for two. I can serenade and gently play on your heart-strings. Be a Valentino just for you. Ooh love, ooh loverboy, What're doing tonight, hey boy. Set my alarm, turn on my charm. That's because I'm a good old-fashioned lover boy.
2	Freddie Mercury		1,414,310
3	Alliance of American Football		1,396,098		Are you sad that the gridiron season has come to an end? Do you miss the presence of the Gronks and Gurleys of the world every Sunday? Do you wish that there was a truncated version of the sport? Do you think that having inferior players will improve the quality of the game (if it can get worse)? Do wonder where all of those Browns' draft picks wound up? If so, then I have the answer you - a brand new league, here to stay... After a stay of execution, that is.
4	Ted Bundy		1,155,963		A two-pronged offensive from Joe Berlinger has seen the most infamous non-astrological serial killer in US history returned firmly to the public zeitgeist - first, there was the seemingly obligatory Netflix series, sending a Bundy Bunch of binge-watchers to the no longer BLP to investigate the malevolent man in greater detail. Then, there is the continuing furore surrounding Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, where cinemagoers will see Troy Bolton play the heinous criminal, where he will presumably get their heads off the court.
5	Dolly Parton		964,290		The most successful theme park enthusiast to not have an alleged affinity for the Nazis, Dolly Parton has worked incredibly hard on a regular schedule to forge a monumentally successful career in country music, a career which was touchingly commemorated at the Grammys by a cascading cornucopia of stars. This evidently reminded the denizens of the Internet about the Jolene singer, who remained in the news throughout the week with murmurs of an upcoming Netflix series, all of which combined to propel Parton to a lofty perch in the report.
6	Cardi B	(Okurrrr?)	859,087		A stalwarth of the report for sometime now, the continued mainstream prominence of the apian artist serves as testament to her victory in the great female rap war of the 2010's over her serpentine belligerent. Cardi B had another characteristically busy week, appearing in trademark style at the Grammys and releasing another finessed hit with music resident Jackson regen. Having placed at #11 in last year's report, early signs indicate that the swarm of interest surrounding the (other) Queen B will not dissipate any time soon.
7	Grammy Award records		719,515		Following the most recent iteration of the awards, a whole swarm of aural aficionados ventured to Wikipedia to see how Childish Gambino fared amongst the all-time greats. My major takeaway from the list however, was just to reaffirm my dislike of the Grammys - U2 have won 22 Grammys, and only two of them were for their best album, while they got eight for dismantling their distinctive, interesting sound. There may be a solid and accurate award show for musicians, but I still haven't found it.
8	Deaths in 2019		718,993		Once again, try as we might to distort the will of Darwinism, people continue to die, and we can do nothing to save them. Although, given the most prominent loss of the last week, it seems likely no one can.
9	Alita: Battle Angel		714,885		Having actually gone to the cinema to see the latest Hollywood attempt at an anime adaptation, I can gladly attest to the splendour of the special effects, where the influence of producer James Cameron is very clearly felt - not since the journey to Pandora have I been so impressed at the multiplex. Sure, the film is somewhat devoid of a satisfying conclusion, and is laden with the usual grab bag of plot contrivances, but for a movie that appeared to be an impending, immense implosion of unintelligible nonsense, it is surprisingly adept.
10	Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez		689,545		Political reform is great and all, but unless your AOC can hit one, then I am not really interested.
11	H.E.R.		660,953		On the grounds that music is dead, I didn't watch the Grammy's, and have broadly no interest in or knowledge of proceedings at the music equivalent of the Tony's. As such, prepare for a truly mind boggling rapid-fire run through people who I have next to no notion about. I was initially taken aback to discover that six hundred thousand Wikipedians spontaneously decided to look up Spike Jonze's science-fiction romance, where the Joker falls in love with Alexa, and was sent erroneously scrambling to Reddit to deduce why. Alas, no, it turns out to be a singer of some kind. I do know that Alicia Keys has an angelic voice capable of opening any door, courtesy of her ruminations on wet dream tomatoes a decade back. She apparently wowed audiences by being the most adept pianist since Sebastian Wilder during an impressive performance at the awards. I have never heard of Kacey Musgraves in any capacity. The internet informs me that she is a country musician, and as she is not named Garth Brooks, that means she never took off on my side of the pond. She does share a name with the city that hosts the National World War I Memorial and the AFC's second-best QB though, so there is that. Finally, we have Dua Lips, who I am familiar with - because she performed at the most recent UEFA Champions League final, and because my head has been wrecked all year by that one song. She won Best New Artist, I've reliably been told by my more aurally-enclined amigos.
12	Alicia Keys		623,904
13	Kacey Musgraves		621,772
14	Dua Lipa		619,123
15	Halsey (singer)		617,092		Saturday Night Live has a rich tradition of getting musicians blessed with both musical and comedic gifts to appear as hosts on double duty, as comedians with appearances in skits, alongside musical performances, dating back to the appearance of Paul Simon in the very first season. As such, it was curious to see them opt for someone lacking talent in either department, and yet Halsey appeared on screens inexplicably last Saturday, inspiring cries of "who?" across the nation. Now, it is probably too earlier in Halsey's career to say that she has less musical ability than Paul Simon has in his little left toe, and yet here I am saying exactly that. It would be remiss to dismiss Halsey's appearance as terrible - after all, many better words exist.
16	61st Annual Grammy Awards		614,131		If you have gotten this far down the report, you know that the Grammy's were on - if I were to summarise the awards as succinctly as possible, it would be this: Lando laps up golden gramophones for poignant and powerful pacy poetry about gargantuan gun plague.
17	Joy Villa		594,780		I have never heard of Joy Villa. I perused and patrolled the news sites for mentions of her, and promptly decided that I don't particularly want that to change. Petulant provocateurs lose their potency if ignored, and there are evidently 594,780 people who would do well to wall themselves away from nonsense, and ignore musicians who rely upon a dress for the attention that their music cannot attract. Maybe if we put aside the pagaentry and grandstanding and focused on lyrics and beat, we could make music great again.
18	ADX Florence		575,308		Despite lacking the architectural prowess of its homophone on the Arno, the behemoth supermax detention centre in Colorado remains an impressive undertaking from an engineering standpoint, with its impenetrable defences designed to neuter the escape strategies of even the most hardened criminals. As any fellow addict of CNN will tell you, the lengthly list of inmates now includes our #24, a man with a unquenchable penchant for prison breaks. However, it is difficult to envision a way out for the Sinaloan connoisseur of fleeing, provided that the guards deign to provide him with a poster of Rita Heyworth.
19	Madhubala		543,557		The benevolent overlords took a break from harvesting our data to pay homage to an early starlet of Bollywood via a captivating Doodle, and consequently the perusers of Wikipedia travel in droves to the article to recall the sublime career of the silver screen's superstar, a career tragically cut short.
20	The Umbrella Academy (TV series)		536,671		It wouldn't be an iteration of the Top 25 Report without the latest Netflix streaming sensation. This week's binge-ready series originates from Dark Horse Comics, the same stable that brought Frank Miller to Las Vegas. It also took a page from the book of the best comic book director, and according to the critics is worth a watch in between episodes of whatever old syndicated sitcom you happen to be binging at the moment.
21	Lady Gaga		516,288		Gaga, amongst the musical icons of her era (and the even more elusive list of modern musicians I am fond of), has seen her star continue its meteoric rise as she seeks awards in all corners. However, her returns thus far have been somewhat shallow, with a childish tycoon scooping glory from her. With stiff competition from Colman and Close, she seems destined to follow in the footsteps of her stellar predecessor (pictured since she's such a big fan of photographers) at the Dolby Theater, and will likely claim only the one statuette.
22	Diana Ross		508,272		One of the supreme stars of the Motown era, Diana Ross has etched a indelible, irrevocable mark in the history of music. Though I best associate her with presenting the Jackson 5 to the world (a decision that surely must have been easy as 1,2,3), to reduce her career to just that would be doing Diana dirty - no, Diana Ross produced mega-hits in her own right, and she celebrated her 75th birthday by singing a duo of them at the Grammys in a sublime and remarkable performance.
23	Saint Valentine		494,069		You know the tale (well at least another half million of you or so do now) - a priest in an era where Catholics were routinely persecuted by the Romans, ultimately executed on February 14th and committed to the annals of history forever as a martyr, and a subsequent excuse for crass commercial capitalism. What you may not know is that the heart of the saint lies in a small box on Whitefriar Street, Dublin - so there is that, I guess.
24	Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán		491,339		El Chapo, the heinous head of the sinister Sinaloa cartel, was finally apprehended by Mexican authorities in 2016, and was extradited to the USA, where he will serve a minimum mandatory life sentence in our #18. He may fear that there is no escape from the formidable facility, but he should simply remember that there is always light at the end of the tunnel.
25	Gully Boy		487,074		We finish with another staple of the report in the form of the latest cinematic Hindi hit - the latest film drawing in all of the crore from the Bollywood box office stars the enigmatic Ranveer Singh and appears to be pleasing audiences with its emphasis on new age music and rap, with solid reviews propelling it to ample profit, and meaning that it could persevere in the report for a while; impressive, given its lack of Khan-power.

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 exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% 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.