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   So come to the cabaret      Come taste the wine   Come hear the band   Come blow that horn   Start celebrating right this way   Your table's waiting      What could 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 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 your 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   Isn't that long a stay   Life is a cabaret, old chum   It's only a cabaret, old chum   And I love a cabaret