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 a 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,
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 all alone in you room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret."

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,
Only a Cabaret, old chum
And I love a Cabaret.