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 your 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 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 your room?

Come, hear the music play

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the Cabaret"

And as for me, ha, 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

It's only a cabaret, old chum

And I love a cabaret