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's 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 all alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret"

And as for me, ha
And 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
It isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret