Songfacts®:

• "Has My Fire Really Gone Out?" is a song filled with introspection and a touch of uncertainty where Paul Weller questions his creative spark after years in the music industry.
• Paul Weller's eponymous first solo album after breaking up his post-The Jam band, The Style Council, received mixed reviews from critics. While some praised Weller's return to a more rock-oriented sound, others found fault with the album's production and its departure from the prevailing musical trends of the time.
  
  He recorded "Has My Fire Really Gone Out?" for his second solo album, Wild Wood. "It was me just taking the piss, really. Because I was written off, especially from the late-Style Council onwards," he told Mojo magazine. "And on that first album, there were some shocking reviews. You know saying, 'He's over... he's finished.' I was like, 'Really? We'll see about that.' That always puts the fight in me, which is a good thing."
• London-based music producer Brendan Lynch began working with Weller towards the end of The Style Council, contributing engineering credits to their later albums. Their most fruitful collaboration came during Weller's solo career. Lynch co-produced several of Weller's most critically acclaimed albums, including Wild Wood. The album marked a shift in Weller's sound, incorporating jazz, folk and soul influences. Lynch added electronic textures and sweeping keyboards to help capture this new direction.
• According to Lynch, this song was inspired by a blisteringly dismissive magazine article about Weller. "Basically it was one of those articles: 'Paul Weller, where did it go wrong?'" the producer related to Mojo. "He put it down and he went, 'That was a bit harsh.' That's all he said. But quite soon after that he'd written has my fire gone out? I thought that was kind of an answer to those naysayers who thought he was finished."