Interesting how tastes go.
What bands are you talking about that actually wrote melodic rock.
Lawrence Welk?
In that day, thinking Cars, Bondie, Boston, Steve Miller Band, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Skynard, etc. They wrote, produced, and played actual songs that still live on today in many jukeboxes. The Ramones were noise, and worse was the Sex Pistols. You rarely hear them because they had no soul - just angst that appealed to some teenagers. You rarely even hear Nirvana that was a re-constituted punk band. Nothing new there either.