Song Lyrics

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.

What good's 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 for sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact she rented by the hour.
The day she died the neighbors
Came to snick her
Well, that is 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 till this very day
I remember how she'd turned 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
Ha
And as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go
I'm going like Elsie.

Star by admitting
From cradle to tomb
It isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum!
It's only a cabaret, old chum!
And I love a cabaret!

Fred Ebb, John Kander