Mystery solved! So THAT’S why *NSYNC had a star in their name

'N SYNC, NSYNC, even N-Sync… Justin Timblerlake's former boyband has been given many different titles.

But officially the band was always known as *NSYNC, leaving us with one of pop music's greatest mysteries.

Why, exactly, is there an asterix in the name?

Well it turns out it wasn't a typo, or a Nineties attempt to be cool. Instead, it was a piece of advice from world-famous psychic and illusionist Uri Gellar.

Speaking to the Huffington Post recently, band member Joey Fatone recalled Uri telling the fivesome that he saw "something to do with suns or stars or something with astronomy" in their career.

And Uri himself backed up Joey's story, revealing he advised the boys to place an image of a star on their first album, released back in 1997.

"Of course I bent spoons for them and they were very impressed," he said of his first meeting with the *NSYNC boys.

"We sat down and I wrote, on a napkin, NSYNC, and I drew a star in the café. And I told them, if they place that star on their first CD, they’re going to shoot up to Number One.

"I think drawing and writing down their name and creating that star gave them that subliminal push to go for it."

And while that first album only ever made to #2 in the charts, it did reach platinum a whopping ten times over in the USA alone… so we reckon Uri was onto something.