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
So 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 goods 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 for sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact she rented by the hour

The day she died the neighbors
Came to snick her
Well, that is 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 till 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
And as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go I'm going like Elsie

Star 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