After reviving it unexpectedly for live performances in 2000, Bowie re-recorded the song in 2000 for the Toy project, which was initially shelved and released posthumously in 2021.

[4][9] The instruments act in tandem with Bowie's vocal performance; while primarily led by organ and bass, the orchestra's tuba, oboe and trumpet work as a chorus.

[4] In a press release for the single, Deram described the track as "David Bowie's partly autobiographical cameo of the brave and defiant little mod racing uphill along Wardour Street to an empty Paradise.

[4][16] For the American release, issued on 27 May 1967 and with the re-recorded album version of "Rubber Band",[17] "There Is a Happy Land" (taken from David Bowie [1967]) replaced "The London Boys" due to the latter's drug references.

[18] In his memoir, Pitt praised the track: "I thought it was a remarkable song, and in it David had brilliantly evoked the atmosphere of his generation and his London.

Nicholas Pegg writes that it "is among Bowie's most sophisticated recordings of the period, demonstrating a mature grasp of pace and dynamics",[5] a sentiment echoed by Spitz, who considered it "far superior" to the A-side.

[14] NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray concurred, writing in 1981: "The B-side is a far more serious affair, and probably the most moving and pertinent work that Bowie produced prior to 'Space Oddity' [1969].

Sung in the second person to a young provincial would be mod trying to keep up with the ace faces in the Big Smoke, 'The London Boys' is a slow agonising portrayal of the inevitable comedown from the amphetamine exhilaration of 'My Generation'.

[5] Shortly after, he re-recorded "The London Boys" during the sessions for the Toy project between July and October 2000, along with other tracks he wrote and recorded during the mid-1960s, including "Can't Help Thinking About Me".

[25] The lineup consisted of members of Bowie's then-touring band: guitarist Earl Slick, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, pianist Mike Garson, musician Mark Plati and drummer Sterling Campbell, along with instrumentalist Lisa Germano on violin and backing vocalists Holly Palmer and Emm Gryner.

[26][25] Co-produced by Bowie and Plati, the band rehearsed the songs at Sear Sound Studios in New York City before recording them as live tracks.

[29][30] Ten years later, on 29 September 2021, Warner Music Group announced that Toy would get an official release on 26 November as part of the box set Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001) through ISO and Parlophone.

[31][35] Reviewing Toy, Alexis Petridis in The Guardian found the remake of "The London Boys" "loses something of its grimy kitchen-sink drama quality amid the new distorted guitar and synth arrangement".

[36] Helen Brown of The Independent noted that the new version "sheds the ambitious Bromley boy’s plaintive panic for a smoothly soulful narrative that soars into the arms of a brassy crescendo".