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

[Chorus]
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

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

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

[Verse]
I used to havе this girlfriend known as Elsie
With whom I shared four solid rooms in Chеlsea
She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact she rented by the hour
[Verse]
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

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

[Chorus]
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

[Verse]
And as for me
And as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go
I'm going like Elsie
[Verse]
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 ca-ba-ret