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.
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 sorbid 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 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 turned to me and say:

"What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret.

And as for me,
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
Isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
It's only a cabaret, old chum,
And I love the cabaret.

Copyright: BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group
Writer(s): Fred Ebb, John Kander