what good is sitting alone
In you 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 a 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 chum,
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 waht 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 alone
In you 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."

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
Isn’t that a long a stay.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Only a cabarert, old chum
And I love a cabaret.