Cabaret

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.

No use 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 neighbours
Came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes
From too much pills and liquor."
But when I saw her laid down 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, ah, 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 a long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
It's only a Cabaret, old chum
And I love a Cabaret.