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 your horn
Start celebrating;
Right this way
Your table's waiting

What good admitting some prophet of doom?
To wipe every smile away
Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret!

I used to have this roommate
Known as Kelsey
With whom I shared
Four sordid rooms in Chelsea

He wasn't what you'd call
A blushing flower
As a matter of fact
He rented by the hour

The day he died the neighbors
Came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes
From too much pills and liquor."

But when I saw him laid out like a queen
He was the happiest corpse
I'd ever seen

I think of Kelsey to this very day
I'd remember how'd he turn to me and say:
"What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret."

And as for me, as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go, I ain't going like Kelsey

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