Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works. If upvotes alone mattered, HN would quickly degenerate into Reddit. The bar is whether "good hackers" would find this interesting. Death notices of famous artists are the definition of off-topic: "most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." If normies care…
I do think HN should have an obit: category and filter them out the main page. It's one thing to have obits for people who wouldn't be covered by regular news, but "75 year old celebrity dies" is not any kind of new phenomenon. It generates a decent amount of upvotes and discussion based on name recognition and nostalgia, but every thread is essentially the same, "Oh, that's sad, I liked their work, .".
Ask HN: Any good replacements for "Refined Hacker News?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48845676 is an opportunity, for example. Show HN awaits for whatever you build.