Why was “melodic” such a controversial tag?

For a while it was hotly contested to get the melodic tags on some top albums like OKC, Loveless, the first Velvets album and i understood why but i always thought the reason was really stupid (presumably people were conflating melodic with “poppy” and “poppy” = “bad”) and even today there’s probably a lot of albums I would readily describe as melodic even if they’re a more uncompromising listen (Kid A, parts of Feedbacker, a fair amount of Crimson releases). Again i never got the stigma— isn’t melodic one of the core tenets of music? (as hip hop expert ben shapiro infamously put it…)