“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,
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 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,
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,
Only a Cabaret, old chum
And I love a Cabaret.