By 1984, this singer/entertainer had sold around 100 million record albums and given over 2,000 live concerts, yet he was relatively unknown in the United States. Who is he?

The Spanish crooner built a colossal international career by strategically recording his romantic ballads in numerous languages. While a superstar in the Spanish-speaking world, he also released albums in French, Italian, Portuguese, and German, allowing him to dominate charts across Europe and Latin America throughout the 1970s and early 80s. This multilingual approach is how he amassed such staggering sales figures and a massive global following long before most Americans had ever heard his name.

His relative anonymity in the U.S. came to an abrupt end in the very year cited in the question. The American music market had historically been a difficult barrier for foreign-language artists to cross. That changed for him in 1984 with the release of his first major English-language album, "1100 Bel Air Place." The album featured the smash-hit duet "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" with country legend Willie Nelson, which catapulted him to household-name status in the United States, finally aligning his American fame with his worldwide celebrity.