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.

No use 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 neighbours
Came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes
From too much pills and liquor."
But when I saw her laid down 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, ah, 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 Cabaret, old chum
And I love a Cabaret.