What good is sitting
Alone in you room?
Come here 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 a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

Come taste the wine, come hear the band
Come blow a horn, start celebrating
Right this way, your table's waiting

No use permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away
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 remember how she'd turn to me and say
"What good is sitting alone in you room?
Come here 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 a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret"

And as for me as for me
I made my mind up, back in Chelsea
When I go, I'm goin' 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