"What good is sitting alone in your room? [bad word] hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum, [bad word] to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting, the book and the broom.
It's time for a holiday.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum [bad word] to the Cabaret.
 [bad word] taste the [bad word] hear the band. [bad word] 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,
 [bad word] to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie,
With whom I shared a 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 [bad word] 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? [bad word] hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum, [bad word] 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
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.