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

Put down the knitting,
The book and the broom.
It's time for a holiday.
Life is cabaret, old chump,
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.
Come hear the music play.
Life is a cabaret, old chump,
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
From to much pills and liquor."

But when I saw her laid out like a queen
He 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 chump,
Come to the cabaret."

And as for me,
I made up my mind 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!