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 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, come hear the music play
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 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'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"
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 tom
Isn't that long a stay life is a cabaret, old chum
Only a cabaret, old chum and I love a cabaret