Cabaret

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a cabaret, old chump,

Come to the cabaret.

Put down the knitting,

The book and the broom.

It's time for a holiday.

Life is cabaret, old chump,

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.

Come hear the music play.

Life is a cabaret, old chump,

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 to much pills and liquor."

But when I saw her laid out like a queen

He was the happiest corpse.

I'd ever seen.

I think of Elsie to this very day.

I'd remember how'd she turn to me and say:

"What good is sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play.

Life is a cabaret, old chump,

Come to the cabaret."

And as for me,

I made up my mind 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,

Only a cabaret, old chum,

And I love a cabaret!