What good is sitting
Alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chump
Come to the cabaret
Put down the knitting
The book and the broom
It's time for a holiday
Life is cabaret, old chump
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 chump
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 to 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
She'd turn to me and say
"What good is sitting
Alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chump
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 tomb
Isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret