What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the Cabaret

Put down the knitting, the book and the broom
It's time for a holiday
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the Cabaret

Come taste the wine
Come hear the band
Come blow a horn, start celebrating
Right this way, your table's waiting

What good's permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away
Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie
With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower...
Gis a matter of fact, she rented by the hour

The day she died the neighbors came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor!"
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen
She was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen

I think of Elsie to this very day
I remember how she'd turn to me and say
"What good is sitting all alone in you room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the Cabaret!"

And as for me, and as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go
I'm going like Elsie

Start by admitting from cradle to tomb
It isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret!