Does anyone know the story behind the abbrieviation of ‘your’ as ‘yr’ in song titles by bands like Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, et al? My assumption is that it’s supposed to be saying “I don’t owe you anything” because o and u are missing, but I don’t know for sure. I’d be grateful for a link to a history or explanation as well.
Thanks.
Sonic Youth always abbreviate your as yr. And they’ve been around since the early 80’s (Kill Yr. Idols!). I don’t know why they do it.
I’d imagine Bikini Kill do it because they dig Sonic Youth. Kathleen Hanna later turned up on a Sonic Youth album, so the feeling seems to be mutual.
Even if Bikini Kill were paying tribute to Sonic Youth, they did bring about the wonderful “grrl” spelling of girl.
Who else does it?
I’ve gotten letters from twee-pop kids (which is a weird flavor of punk rock) where they signed it “yr friend” or “yr f. hazel” (see i’ve even done it myself). Again, I don’t know why. It just looks cool.
Then again, I just ran it through Dictionary.com and it’s defined as an abbreviation for year or your… so maybe it’s been around.
-fh
Many of the Beat poets (Ginsberg, Kerouac) used to use the yr. abbreviation for your. Sonic Youth loved the Beats, and their influence shows in their lyrics. They also did recordings with Burroughs, and Lee and Thurston appeared on a Kerouac tribute CD. So my guess is that Sonic Youth took the abbreviation from them.
Oh, by the way, the Beat generation preceeded Sonic Youth by about 30 years, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the yr. abbreviation on poetry earlier than that.
There you go. It goes from god, to the Beats, to Sonic Youth, to Bikini Kill, straight to you.
I wouldn’t imagine Bikini Kill like the Beats very much, since they were pretty much sexist bastards.
-fh
They were? For nowadays or for then?
For nowadays, certainly, for then, with qualifications, but still yeah. The Beats may be have been sexual radicals in other ways (writing and being open about their gay relationships stands out as an example), but to overlook how they treated the women who were close to them is giving an incomplete picture. Sometimes they were sexist bastards.
I was thinking of it from Bikini Kill’s point of view, re: the transmission of “yr.” As Riot Grrls, they (or Kathleen Hanna, anyway) were disgusted with a masculine, girl-incompatible idea of what cool was. This idea of cool being tough, distant, self-absorbed, not showing your feelings, etc. is something Kerouac and the Beats pretty much invented. So if Bikini Kill think “yr.” is a neat way of writing “your,” it’s probably because of Sonic Youth, not the Beats.
-fh
typos…
While I can’t attest specifically to “yr,” I think that Prince was one of the pioneers of alternate spellings (like “4” for “for” and “u” for “you”). Not saying he was the first, but he was one of the first popular artists to do it a lot. For all I know, these people never heard of Prince–just saying that song titles with “shorthand” words or symbols have been around a while.
The name Sonic Youth is kind of misleading because they’ve been around almost as long as The Artist; they were formed in 1980 and they released Kill Yr. Idols in 1983. The core musicians are all in their 40s 
[[For nowadays, certainly, for then, with qualifications, but still yeah.]]
There was no such concept as “sexism” in those days. Other than the Quakers, it hadn’t occurred to many people that women were equals.
What??? It’s true that the word itself didn’t appear until 1968, but I suspect instead of using that word, it would suffice to call someone an old-fashioned pig.
Voting doesn’t tell the full story, but Wyoming has allowed women to vote since 1869, and Utah, that bastion of liberalism, since 1870. I don’t think there were a lot of Quakers out west at the time, and it’s clear from this that what began as a Quaker initiative to grant equality to women under the law had started to resonate through much of the country.
I’ll grant that the double standard applied to women’s social, as opposed to legal, role, has been eroded more slowly, a process that continues today. But while the majority of people may not have accepted the full equality of women, it’s not because the idea wasn’t around, or that they had never been exposed to it
Since we’re all so happily off-topic, I’ll just add that Sonic Youth probably wouldn’t have admired a distinctively sexist group either, since the bassist, Kim Gordon, is one of original `riot grrls’ and sings about topics like feminism, rape, anorexia, and sexual harassment.
“Yr.” was also a popular abbreviation used in underground fanzines around the time Sonic Youth were coming up (and is still used today). IIRC, it was used to further differentiate the writers from the “corporate” rock writers of the day. As if the smudgy xeoroxed cheap paper stock didn’t already make the distinction glaringly obvious.
[[Voting doesn’t tell the full story, but Wyoming has allowed women to vote since 1869, and Utah, that bastion of liberalism, since 1870. I don’t think there were a lot of Quakers out west at the time, and it’s clear from this that what began as a Quaker initiative to grant equality to women under the law had started to resonate through much of the country.]]
At the risk of turning this into a GD, Wyoming only gave the vote to women so they could qualify for more legislators. Their population was too small, just counting men. It had nothing to do with “women’s rights.” Socially in the “beat” days it was quite acceptable to treat women as second class citizens in ways that would be considered appalling today. Even as late as the 70s, I remember school rules (I was not allowed to take wood shop in highschool and was required to take home economics. Boys could choose which of those classes they wanted to take. Etc., etc., etc.) and laws that specifically discriminated against females. Hardly anyone batted an eye. Things aren’t perfect today and they were far worse in our very recent history.
JillGat, I think we can agree on this; I was just whining about the width of the brush you used to paint it.