INXS's Don't Change: their first undeniable classic

Don't Change was INXS's first single to be released internationally. There's another way to look at it: this was the last time INXS could really be called ours.

Shabooh Shoobah was the third INXS album, recorded in Sydney with Mark Opitz. The young producer was taking his first stab at pop music after mainly recording rock acts as apprentice to the legendary production and writing team of Harry Vanda and George Young. He had a lot to prove, which made him ideal for a band who were just beginning to take their first steps into the wider world.

The band had paid out of their own pockets to record The One Thing with Opitz, which went some way to convincing them that he could handle an entire album. The partnership paid off and in October 1982 Shabooh Shoobah was the band's first album to break the Australian top five.

More importantly, it was the first INXS album to get widespread international release, reaching No 52 on the Billboard charts and leading to commensurate American touring. From here on in all INXS albums would be released around the world, and this paved the way for the international domination which started in earnest 18 months down the track via the release of Original Sin.

So Shabooh Shoobah was the last album written by a Sydney band for an Australian audience. It's not a classic by any stretch – like its predecessor, 1981's Underneath the Colours, it shows a band still struggling to get a handle on this whole “songwriting” thing – but it does have the first undeniable classic they ever created.

With many of the songs in Australian Anthems the greatest power is in the lyrics. However, words were never INXS's strong suit: Michael Hutchence's genius was always in the delivery and the performance, not the narrative. Don't Change is no exception. “I'm standing here on the ground,” he begins, “The sky above won't fall down.” Yep, so far everything's conforming nicely to the laws of physics.

From there we get into some vague positive affirmations: “See no evil in all directions/Resolution of happiness/Things have been dark for too long.” Even the chorus hook – “Don't change for you/Don't change a thing for me” – is serviceable rather than astonishing.

So what makes the song so powerful? For my money, it's down to two things: that wafty keyboard riff from Andrew Farriss and the vocal harmonies from Kirk Pengilly.

The first evokes the same vast, open space that does similar keyboard lines on songs like the Triffids' Wide Open Road and Icehouse's Great Southern Land. It's almost impossible to hear it without imagining a sweeping helicopter shot of some beautifully barren central desert, rather than the interior of a hanger near Adelaide Airport where Scott Hicks shot the actual video.

But it's Pengilly's harmonies that absolutely make the song. They give an uncertainty to the fairly blunt lyrics, especially the suspended fourths hanging unresolved in the middle of the chorus. That single, beautiful sonic trick turns the song from a platitude to a plea.

Of course, after Don't Change things … well, changed.

INXS stopped being a pub band and became the hottest thing to hit Europe and the US. Shabooh Shoobah was the pebble that began the avalanche, leading to the increasingly-monstrous success of the next four albums – their multi-platinum quartet of The Swing, Listen Like Thieves, Kick and X – and then the decline and tragedy that was to follow.

The band changed dramatically too, leaving their pub rock roots for the sleek, modern funk that defined their sound. Yet through the subsequent years Don't Change was the only song from the early albums that endured. For just about every tour the band did from here on in this was almost always the song that closed their sets, a perfect, unfollowable note to go out on.

It was, appropriately, the final song that INXS played after announcing they were finally calling it a day on stage at Perth Arena in November 2012, after opening for (ahem) Matchbox 20, with milqetoast Irish frontman Ciaran Gribbin the latest candidate to fail to fill the late Hutchence's unfillable shoes.

But that was all to come. For now, Don't Change was the middlingly successful second single off their patchy but promising third album, but most importantly it was also the final song on side two. In that sense Don't Change was the final moment for a band just about to grow up and move on.