Paul McCartney has been all over my television and news feed lately. Last week he appeared on Saturday Night Live as well as on The Late Show as Stephen Colbert’s last interview guest, also performing live in both instances (his finale of ‘Hello, Goodbye’ on Colbert was an impressively on-the-nose coda). His recent documentary “Man on the Run” was just released for streaming on Amazon Prime. A four-film Beatles biopic series helmed by Sam Mendes has just been announced (McCartney cheekily described the actor cast as him as “very cute”). And, lest we bury the lede, Sir Paul has a brand new album out entitled “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” which Rolling Stone has already reviewed as “..a richly nostalgic trip that proves this legend is still as creative as ever.”

That feels like an overreach. This is Paul McCartney we’re talking about, co-creator of the greatest collection of songs in the history of popular music. What I’ve heard of the new album is very nice. The poignant tune ‘Days We Left Behind,’ for one, is simple and charming while covering, yet again, what McCartney has described as the “ever-present past” of the Fab Four.

And that’s what I want to focus on here for a moment. Paul McCartney was 27 years old when The Beatles’ magical mystery tour finally reached the end of the line in 1970. The duration of their entire recording career, a Homeric era that can not, and will not, ever be equaled was, astoundingly, just seven years. Since then, as you know, McCartney has gone on and continued making music: including his time with Wings, that resumé now encompasses 27 more studio albums over a total of 56 years. Next month – you should probably sit for this – he will be 84 years old.

Have I liked all of it? Certainly not. Seemingly, a fair amount has been rather dismissible, silly love songs like, say, ‘Silly Love Songs.’ And it’s inevitably always going to be judged, fairly I’d say, against himself (well, his Lennon-McCartney self), as well as against the ensuing solo careers of his fellow former-Beatles (a list on which, for me, he still places second, with the long-restrained George ascending to the top, while John became too readily Plastic Ono-fied).

Yet, over so long of an intervening time, I think it can also be too easily forgotten that a lot of Paul’s individual output was still exemplary. Considered in its own context, McCartney’s voluminous post-Beatles work has absolutely encompassed a great many great songs. The music world, and society at large, has undergone unforeseeable changes since the Beatles break-up at the close of the sixties, but Paul McCartney has always been able to, and still can, create a damn catchy tune.

All of which makes it altogether thrilling when you discover a new one. New to me, that is: this song in question is from the long-forgotten days of 1971. McCartney’s 1970 debut post-breakup album was titled less than inspiringly as “McCartney,” with its most notable song being ‘Maybe I’m Amazed.’ The follow-up one year later was “Ram,” which contained numerous future McCartney standards (‘Too Many People,’ ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,’ ‘Heart of the Country,’ as well as the non-album single ‘Another Day’).

It also included my semi-recent discovery, a track called ‘Monkberry Moon Delight,’ which I’d describe as filled with nonsensical, surrealistic lyrics, but, more importantly, is a rather frenetic balls-to-the-wall rocker. The normally sweet-sounding Paul employs here the throat-shredding, madcap screaming vocalization you’d likely most associate with his shrieks interspersed in ‘Oh! Darling,’ ‘Why Don’t We Do it in The Road?’ and especially his spastic, raspy improvs during the famous outro to ‘Hey Jude.’ I love that unhinged Paul voice. At certain points in this one it might reach the level of caterwauling, but that’s going to be a judgement call.

Unlike those other Beatles classics, however, in ‘Monkberry Moon Delight’ McCartney ardently keeps the crazed growling and deranged scatting going for pretty much the entirety of this 5-plus minute romp. Even, almost shockingly, taking it yet another level up about midway through to a sound I struggle to properly characterize, but it’s something like a feverish falsetto freak-out. And it’s simply fantastic.

I found a review in Ultimate Classic Rock rating ‘Monkberry Moon Delight’ as McCartney’s most underrated song, saying that it “features one of his rawest vocals tracks ever” and a “stomping rhythm with whimsical backup vocals.” Amen to all of that (besides, the concept of “underrated” is malleable enough to conveniently fit lots of descriptions and situations).

Regardless, the key takeaway is that it’s a pretty cool thing to come upon new music, that’s actually over five decades old, by the most famous musician on the planet, that a devoted enthusiast still somehow managed to miss.

Is that circumstance itself kind of an interesting scenario? Maybe it could develop into a recurring SMGM feature: Great songs by gigantic artists that music fans inexplicably may not know. The title needs a little punching up; let’s just consider it a placeholder before a potential next installment.