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

Put down your knitting
Your book and your broom
It is time for a holiday
Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the cabaret
Come taste the wine
Come hear the band
Come blow that 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 for sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact she rented by the hours

The day she died the neighbors
Came to snicker her
Well, that is what comes from
Too much pills and liquor

But when I saw her laid down like a queen
She was the happiest corpses 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 am going like Elsie
Star by admitting from cradle to doom

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