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
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
As a matter of fact she rented by the hour

The day she died the neighbors came to snicker
Well, that's what comes of to 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'd remember how'd she 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"

Put down the knitting, the book and the broom
Time for a holiday
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
Only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret