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,

So Come to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend

Known as Elsie,
With whom I shared
A 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,
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 a long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,

It's only a Cabarert, old chum
And I love a Cabaret.