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
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
No use 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 this girlfriend
Known as Elsie
With whom I shared four
Sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call
A blushing flower
As 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 turned 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'm going like Elsie
Start by admitting from cradle to tomb
Isn't that long a stay?
Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love the cabaret