The word "derivative" often gets a bad rap, and that's probably because it's often used negatively. It's associated with the idea of being unoriginal, an imitation derived from an already existing work, the way people used to dismiss Gaga as Madonna lite.
Linguistically, derivative means a word formed from another word or base. There's nothing negative about a bibliographic derivative relationship. Officially, it's simply the relationship between a bibliographic work and a modification based on the work, like the English version of Stieg Larsson's Män som hatar kvinnor - which became The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - or a revised Roald Dahl edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with the word "ugly" removed. (Awful. Not normally a Rushdie fan, but I had to agree - that was totally absurd revisionism.)
So if a derivative relationship denotes the one between an original entity and its subsequent variations (ex. editions, revisions, translations, or even - as Taylor notes - new works based on the style or thematic content of other works), there's quite a few music videos that can demonstrate this type of relationship.
Variations
I like to think a lyric video and the subsequent "Official Video" is a good example of a variation. As someone with really crappy hearing and pre-internet experience with Song Hitz magazines featuring lyrics like "a scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly, and is also known as a bus stop," the rise of the lyric video thrilled me no end - no more separate tabs with lyrics so I could follow along! God bless accessibility.
Bad Liar (Lyric Video) - Imagine Dragons (2019)
Including captions drives viewer engagement, and artists tend to use lyric videos as a sort of teaser before releasing their official oeuvre, if they have the budget.
Bad Liar - Imagine Dragons (2019)
Here's the official video for Bad Liar. Even if the song shares absolutely no visual similarities with the lyric video version, I'd argue that this counts as a variation, and a derivative relationship, like releasing a book with a different cover.
Translations
Sometimes artists with an international reach release versions of a single in different languages in order to engage fans all over the world. Case in point: Colombian singer Shakira, who whose popularity in Latin America dwarfs even that of her North American audience. Here are two versions of a cut from her She Wolf album which she released in both English and Spanish, featuring a younger Rafael Nadal to sweeten the pot.
Gypsy - Shakira (2010)
Gitana - Shakira (2010)
It's the same music video, with the same visual beats - the only difference is one is sung in English, and the other sung in Spanish.
Parodies
There's a difference between parody and homage - both are recreations of an original, except one has a humorous, irreverent bent and the other takes a more deferential tone. Both count as a derivative relationship. For a stellar example, let's flashback to Chamillionaire's monster 2006 hit.
Ridin' Dirty - Chamillionaire feat. Krayzie Bone (2006)
Now for the parody.
White and Nerdy - Weird Al Yankovic (2006)
You knew this was coming.
Sometimes a parody is so good, it matches the original's popularity in the collective consciousness. All due respect to Chamillionaire, but when that chorus hits, it's Weird Al's version that I'm bellowing out at the top of my lungs. I am not white, and I don't think I'm that nerdy, but I like singing it anyway.
Weird Al captures the unique rap flow of the song perfectly, and this is parody at its finest. A pre-fame Key and Peele? Donny Osmond going for broke? The red lights forming Pac-man? That back-alley bootleg VHS exchange? I love this so much. This, Amish Paradise, and The Saga Begins are my favourite Yankovic parodies. Weird Al is a talented wordsmith, a facile musician, and an all-around genius. His chosen genre may be derivative, but he does it so well, I can't hate.
REFERENCES
Taylor, A. (2004). The organization of information (2nd ed.). Libraries Unlimited.
Tillett, B.B. (2004). Bibliographic relationships. In Bean, C.A., & Green, R. (Eds.,) Relationships in the organization of knowledge. Libraries Unlimited.
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