The worse alternatives is where the "top passwords" lists come from... those lists are from people that are not using any password store:
https://www.google.com/search?q=top+passwords+2017&ie=utf-8&...
The most horrible alternative I've seen: I once worked with a person who used his Outlook "contacts" as his "password manager." I discovered that after he quit and I was deactivating his accounts. Not only did he use Outlook "contacts" as his "password manager", but his passwords were discoverable (based on readily available personal information), guessable (e.g. pa$$word), and heavily reused either directly or as minor variations.
In a perfect world, that is, if no service stored passwords with risible security, just remembering 2 or 3 strong passwords would be workable
Instead, since we live in a word where several system developers are inexperienced or just plain idiots, there is a need for passwords to be disposable
Password manager are worthy because they allow you to keep several different passwords and the strong password they require hopefully is not stored as MD5 anywhere.