One of the funnier reviews of Jose Gonzalez is on YouTube. A random punter refers to him as 'that dude who makes upbeat songs into songs that make you cry'.
It's not entirely false. Although Gonzalez is an acclaimed indie musician, one of his better known covers is an acoustic version of the 80s Kylie Minogue track, Hand on Your Heart. Then there's the lo-fi version of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and the one that made him famous, Heartbeats, an acoustic take on the song by Swedish electro-pop duo the Knife.
'I like the way Johnny Cash did covers - he did unexpected covers of popular songs,' Gonzalez says. The Swedish singer-songwriter with a distinctly Latin name (his parents are Argentinean) was well known in Sweden for his 2003 debut, Veneer, but it wasn't until Sony picked up Heartbeats in 2006 to use in a commercial for its Bravia television that Gonzales registered on the radar of the worldwide press.
'It's understandable these covers are more known than my own songs,' he says. 'I've been picking songs that are either my favourites or songs that are well known ... so I'm sort of competing with my own favourites.'
His gently accented voice is as softly spoken as you'd expect from his albums: low-key, almost ethereal affairs featuring classical guitar over hushed, clipped vocals that trace their way through songs with sparse percussion that's often as simple as a hand tapping guitar frets.
Born in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he still lives with his girlfriend, Gonzalez has a remarkable musical pedigree in that he doesn't have one. 'I didn't have any musical upbringing, though my dad used to sing when he was younger,' he says. 'I started quite late, at the age of 14, and it's always been my main hobby. I always did my homework, though, and it wasn't weird for me to choose to go to uni.'