Eddie Tews did a detailed study of how The Yip Song evolved lyrically before it was released. Per Robyn's verbal intros at gigs, the song was originally entitled "Vera Lynn." Robyn talked about this song on the promo record SPECTRE, on which he explains each of the songs on RESPECT:

"Yeah, we did have a small dog, many years ago. My girlfriend
at the time had a small dog. And in fact, her mother had another small
dog, a bit later. And I used to say "yip" to the dog a lot -- the
dog used to yip when it wanted to go in or out, and we had another
one that used to yip when it wanted to go up or down, you know; it
would come up three flights of stairs and then it would yip at the
top of the stairs because it wanted to get back down again. It was
called Yipper. That's pretty much what that song came from... was
actually small dogs, but it's not about small dogs. It's about,
actually, people consenting to a useless operation designed to prolong
someone's life for an extra few weeks, while they in their delirium
imagine this woman Vera Lynn, who is the force's sweetheart. She was
like the Axl Rose of her day, you know? And he sort of tried to call
out to this image, in his pain, as he's passing away, being destroyed
by something. And all these voices are kind of saying "Yeah, surgery
would be a good idea. Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip." But, you know,
originally the song was nothing to do with that at all; it was "Vera
Lynn, Vera Lynn / She played punk rock with her fin" and I imagined
Vera Lynn as having this enormous great black, kind of shark's fin on
her back. That she used it to strum some sort of Les Paul guitar
as if she was cleaning her back with a guitar in the bathtub, just
stroking this guitar back and forth across her fin, and somehow all
these sort of punky chords would be coming out."