Violence, Failure, and One Direction: The Best Recent Pop-Culture Writing

Welcome to our weekly roundup of the most intriguing articles about pop culture we've come across in the past seven 21 days (we skipped last two weeks because of the holidays). Click the links in the article titles to read the full pieces, and let us know what we've missed:

The previous best pop-culture writing

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/violence-failure-and-one-direction-the-best-recent-pop-culture-writing/266405/