1987 was produced using extensive unauthorised samples that plagiarised a wide range of musical works, continuing a theme begun in the JAMs' debut single "All You Need Is Love".

Shortly after independent release in June 1987, the JAMs were ordered by the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society to destroy all unsold copies of the album, following a complaint from ABBA.

They also released a version of the album titled 1987 (The JAMs 45 Edits), stripped of all unauthorised samples to leave periods of protracted silence and so little audible content that it was formally classed as a 12-inch single.

[3][n 1] The reaction to "All You Need Is Love" was positive; the British music newspaper Sounds listed it as the single of the week,[7] and lauded The JAMs as "the hottest, most exhilarating band this year".

[15] The beatbox rhythms are basic (described as "weedy" by Q magazine),[16] samples often cut abruptly, and distinctive plagiarised melodies are often played with a high-pitched rasping accompaniment.

It progresses into a cryptic and bleak spoken verse from Drummond: "Here we come, crawling out of the mud, from chaos primeval to the burned out sun, dragging our bad selves from one end of time, with nothing to declare but some half-written rhymes".

[18] The track is followed by a long sample of a London Underground train arriving at and leaving a tube station, with its recorded warning to passengers, "Mind the gap...".

Built around The Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five" and Fred Wesley's "Same Beat",[11] the lyrics are mostly unconventional, with the majority of the song containing references to food: "I was pushing my trolley from detergent to cheese when I first saw the man with antler ears.

[18] The first side of the LP closes with "Rockman Rock (Parts 2 and 3)", a homage to Jimmy Cauty that plagiarises from an array of sources, including the "Bo Diddley Beat" and "Sunrise Sunset" from the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack.

The song also protests the involvement of cigarette companies in sport ("When cancer is the killer/John Player run the league") and lambasts the "tabloid mentality" ("They all keep talking about Princess Di's dress").

[12] After nearly three minutes of samples from the television show Top of the Pops, as well as sound clips from programmes and advertisements on other TV channels, Drummond cries "Fuck that, let's have The JAMs!".

A legal showdown with ABBA and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) followed, 1987 was forcibly withdrawn from sale, and The JAMs were ordered to "deliver up the master tape, mothers, stampers and any other parts commensurate with manufacture of the record".

[32] Failing to find ABBA in residence at Polar Studios in Stockholm, they instead presented the gold disc to a blonde prostitute they pretended was Agnetha "fallen on hard times".

[32] The trip was unexpectedly eventful, the JAMs accidentally hitting and killing a moose, and later being shot at by a farmer, a bullet cracking the engine of their Ford Galaxie police car.

'"[33] In 1994, The Guardian looked back on the Swedish sojourn as "a grand, futile, attention-grabbing gesture, the kind that would come to characterise [the duo's] collaborative career... "We were being totally stupid about it" Drummond later acknowledged.

It liked some of its tracks: "there are some wickedly amusing ideas and moments of pure poetry in the lyrics while some of the musical juxtapositions are both killingly funny and strong enough to stand repeated listenings".

He also argued that: "Some snatches [of plagiarised music] rather outstay their welcome, tugging tell-tale glitz away from the clifftop and dangerously close to smug obviousness, but when the blows are kept short, sharp and very bloody, they make anything else you're very likely to hear on the radio dull and desperately humourless.

"Audacity, completely unfounded self-confidence, utter ruthlessness and a fast car will, of course, be useful attributes to the go-ahead noise-pirate of the 90s, but skill, feel, instinct, vision—y'know, boring old talent—will still be bottom line compulsories, it's in these latter commodities that the JAMs seem conspicuously undertooled."

Compared to the output of DJ Code Money or Cut Creator ("all humour, vibrancy and colour – aerosoled version[s] of The Book of Kells") Kelly felt Drummond's efforts to be a "glitter-crusted charity Christmas card".

[41] Giving another retrospective review from across the Atlantic, Trouser Press described 1987 as "energetic" and "a loopy dance album that isn't unlike a lot of sampled records, but proceeds from an entirely different cultural understanding.

Following the enforced deletion of the 1987 album, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu released an edited version as a 12" single, with all of the unauthorised samples removed, leaving sparse instrumentation, Drummond's social commentary and, in several cases, long periods of silence; the "Top of the Pops" section of the original LP yielded three minutes of silence on 45 Edits, and the only sample remaining from the original was The Fall's "Totally Wired."

[44] The sleevenotes to "1987: The JAMs 45 Edits" explain to the purchaser in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion how to recreate the original 1987 album for themselves: This record is a version of our now deleted and illegal LP '1987, What The Fuck Is Going On?'